Italy still wants justice from US for Iraq shooting

ROME, Mar 4 (Reuters) Italy has raised the stakes in a spat with the United States over the killing by a US soldier of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq, saying Washington must set things right by assuming responsibility for the death.

Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema openly challenged the United States at a weekend commemoration of Nicola Calipari, the agent killed on March 4, 2005 at a US military checkpoint near Baghdad airport.

His speech made the national media, with headlines such as that in today's La Repubblica newspaper of Rome: ''D'Alema accuses the United States over the Calipari case.'' Calipari became a national hero for securing freedom for kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena. He died shielding her from gunfire at the checkpoint just after her release.

A Rome judge last month ordered the US soldier to stand trial for the killing but Washington has refused to hand him over and considers the case closed.

''The name of the person who is believed to have fired the shots is known. Whatever the truth is, this was a lost opportunity for the Americans,'' D'Alema said. ''Right now, there is a need for justice to be done.'' Mario Lozano, of the US Army's 69th Infantry Regiment, has been charged with voluntary homicide for the shooting. The trial begins next month and Lozano will be tried in absentia.

While the defence departments of Italy and the United States say the killing was an accident in a war zone, Italian prosecutors will try Lozano on charges of murder for Calipari and attempted murder for the two other people in the car.

Lozano, of the New York Army National Guard, was the gunner at the US checkpoint. The US military says the car carrying the Italians did not slow down but Italian prosecutors contest this.

D'Alema said Washington should have behaved the way it did over an incident in 1998, when a low-flying US jet on a training mission in northern Italy clipped the cables of a ski gondola at the northern town of Cavalese.

Twenty people were killed when the gondola crashed into the Cermis mountain.

In that incident a US military court convicted a Marine pilot of obstructing justice but absolved him of manslaughter.

Still, the United States offered compensation to victims of the families and the US ambassador at the time, Thomas Foglietta, went to the area and literally got down on his knees to ask forgiveness in the name of former President Bill Clinton.

''The American government assumed responsibility with an act of great political and moral value (for the Cermis deaths),'' D'Alema said. ''This has not happened this time.'' Calipari's widow Rosa has denounced Washington for exonerating Lozano and the former government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for accepting the shooting was an accident.

Sgrena, the freed Italian journalist, was wounded in the shooting and is seeking damages from Washington.

REUTERS SP RAI2056