20/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - "Your Eminence, Chief Rabbi, Ladies and gentlemen, this is why dialogue is important. This is the subject I chose for my speech to you today. Last night in my home town of Bologna, a few hundred meters from where I live, a friend of mine was murdered. He was called Marco Biagi…He was a lecturer at the University of Modena and an expert in employment law". This is how Romano Prodi mentioned the assassination of the Minister of Culture, Mr Biagi, in Bologna, at Wednesday's conference on dialogue between the cultures, in Brussels (see EUROPE yesterday page 16). Mr Prodi pointed out that Mr Biagi had been appointed by the Commission and was a member of the high level group on the future of industrial relations that had prepared the social dialogue discussed a few days ago in Barcelona and, who had worked all his life promoting dialogue between the different social partners. Commissioner Diamantopoulou expressed her sadness at a press conference, indicating that she had been planning to attend a conference on social dialogue in April in Bologna with Mr Biagi.