Monday, February 9, 1998

Cable incident in Italy calls for full investigation

As President Clinton has pledged, the United States must carefully and honestly investigate how it was that a Marine Corps jet sliced a cable at an Italian ski resort, thereby causing 20 people aboard a gondola to fall to their deaths.

Something was clearly amiss in the incident, and Italian officials deserve a thorough explanation, even if some of what a few of them are now saying seems premature.

The chief question an investigation must answer is obvious. Why was the jet, an EA-6B Prowler, flying so low? It was probably on a radar-detecting training exercise, but the military requires that these jets go no lower than 1,000 feet, whereas this one was apparently within several hundred feet of the ground. Residents of the area say the jets routinely fly at such dangerously low levels, that they have complained frequently about it and that they have been ignored. They seem almost as angry at Italian officials as at Americans at the Aviano base.

For their part, the Italian officials are aiming their outrage at Americans. The prime minister says the jet was "practically scraping the ground" and that the accident was a consequence of "tragic recklessness." The mayor of Cavalese, a town near the resort, says the accident was caused by a "stupid" and "irresponsible" stunt by the pilot. The Italian defense minister has called for a criminal prosecution on homicide charges.

These comments seem fueled, in part, by a sense of American arrogance, and perhaps by some resentment of the American presence, which has been regarded in Washington as strategically important. There is, however, much information that must yet be obtained before the accusations can be regarded as justified.

While the investigation proceeds, the Italian officials are certainly right to insist that another pledge by President Clinton be kept, and that is that the United States will make every effort to prevent such an accident in the future.