ROME -- Italy reacted with dismay to the rejection by U.S. congressional negotiators to quickly compensate the families of victims killed when a U.S. Marine jet sheared a ski gondola cable last year.
A terse statement by the office of Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema issued late Friday carried little of the diplomatic language normally used when two friendly governments have a difference of opinion."We do not consider this matter closed," Cabinet Undersecretary Marco Minniti said in the statement.
Italians were among the 20 skiers who were killed in February 1998 when the U.S. jet on a training mission in northern Italy clipped the cables of a gondola, sending it crashing on to a mountainside in the Cermis valley. Austrians, Belgians, Dutch and a Polish boy were also among the dead.
"The decision by the U.S. Congress to reject compensation for the victims of Cermis is very grave," Minniti added. "It is even more upsetting when one considers the two sentences, which created deep dissatisfaction."
U.S. Marine Capt. Richard Ashby, a pilot aboard the EA-6B Prowler surveillance plane, was sentenced this week to six months in jail after a military jury convicted him of conspiring to obstruct a probe into the accident.
Ashby was cleared in a separate military court hearing last year of more serious charges of involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide.
Minniti said the matter "of such a tragedy, which deeply wounded our country and the international community, will not be closed until justice is done."
The compensation provision, offering up to $40 million to the victims' families, was removed from a $15 billion emergency spending bill funding the air war against Yugoslavia and aid to Central American states hit by Hurricane Mitch.
Claims for compensation may now have to go through the Italian courts -- not best known for making swift rulings, with most civil cases such as compensation taking years.