FLORENCE, ITALY – Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said the United States is Italy’s principal friend and ally, speaking at Florence’s American cemetery on the occasion of US Memorial Day 2015 on Monday.
Renzi called the United States a sister nation and said Italy «will never forget its debt to the United States» following WWII, while also remembering the other nations that helped Italy. Memorial Day commemorates all men and women who have died in military service for the United States.
The cemetery, run by the American Battle Monuments Commission, is the final resting place for US Army soldiers who died in WWII fighting in 1944 and 1945. Renzi said the more than 4,000 crosses there «remind us of the values that unite us with which still today we respond to those who challenge our values, to those who still today attack our society, to those who challenge our culture, to those who want to make us live in terror».
Renzi recalled a John F. Kennedy speech containing the phrase «not merely peace in our time but peace in all time», and said «peace isn’t eternal, and it has to be nurtured and protected today more than ever».
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