(ANSA) - Rome, February 14 - President Sergio Mattarella
replied to a Slovenian complaint about Italian officials'
statements on Foibe Remembrance Day by saying he was concerned
about verbal excesses in the EU, the office of Slovenian
President Borut Pahor said Thursday.
"I share Your concerns regarding the climate that is
sometimes registered in Europe today", Mattarella wrote in his
letter to Pahor. "I find, in fact, a raising of tones myself
also, a lower consideration for the opinions of others, verbal
excesses that should not have a place in our common European
home". On the remembrance day for the thousands of Italian
victims of Tito's partisans, Deputy Premier and Interior
Minister Matteo Salvini said the children who died in the Foibe
mountain pits and the children of Auschwitz "are the same".
Deputy Forza Italia President Antonio Tajani, the European
Parliament President, meanwhile ended a speech by saying "long
live Italian Istria and Dalmatia". These statements spurred
protests from Slovenia and Croatia. The Foibe is the name given
to the mass murder of Italian people in Venezia Giulia, Istria
and Dalmatia, mostly by Yugoslav Partisans, during and after the
Second World War. (ANSA).
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