Mrs. Thatcher has been spending the day in Rome in talks with the Italian Prime Minister, Signor Spadolini. With her are the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This afternoon, Mrs. Thatcher and Signor Spadolini gave a news conference together. David Willey was there: [end p1]
These bilateral talks between Italy and Britain are supposed to take place every six months but the last session was upset by an Italian Government crisis&em;and Senor Spadolini is spending most of his efforts this week on avoiding yet another domestic political crisis. However, during a working lunch Senor Spadolini and Mrs Thatcher covered a wide range of world problems&em;including the Lebanon, trade relations with the United States and the situation in Latin America after the liberation of the Falklands. Mrs Thatcher said that there was still no specific European peace plan for the Middle East. But there was agreement that the real nature of the problem was a lack of home for the Palestinians.
And she added, We are not near a solution to that problem yet. Asked by an Italian journalist whether the American decision to stop the deliveries of material for the Soviet gas pipeline was not a betrayal, Mrs Thatcher said that was no a word she used, but she said it was a bad decision for the United States.