Debate flares in Italy over Meloni party's 'fascist flame'

A minister in the government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has proposed removing the green, white and red flame in her party's logo that recalls the fascism of wartime dictator Benito Mussolini, a press report said on Thursday.

"If we want to look forward, then the time will come to douse the flame," Minister for Parliamentary Relations Luca Ciriani told the Il Foglio newspaper.

The flame in Italy's national colours derives from the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a party founded by Mussolini's followers in 1946. It is seen as symbolic of the eternal flame burning on Mussolini's grave.

In 1995, the MSI became the more moderate National Alliance (AN), which retained the symbol, and the AN evolved in 2012 into the Brothers of Italy, the party that Meloni leads.

Ciriani, who leads Meloni's party in the Senate, stressed that the flame belonged to "past history" and added that the time would come for it to be removed from the party's logo. "It may not be soon, but it will come," he said.

Senate President Ignazio La Russa, a member of the same party, was non-committal. "Remove the flame at some point? The world will also go under sooner or later," he said.

Another senior party member, Fabio Rampelli, vice president of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, rejected the idea.

"Almost 30% of Italians placed their cross under our symbol. It does not seem to me that the people have a problem with it. On the contrary, perhaps they vote for us precisely because we have the flame," the Corriere della Sera newspaper quoted him saying.