SEVEN-TIME former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti, who died on Monday at the age of 94, was a cunning political power broker who presided over Italy's recovery after World War II and was accused of close ties with the mafia.
A government minister for over three decades, Andreotti was involved through all the upheavals that rocked Italy from the war until his retirement from mainstream political life in 1992.
A Machiavellian politician with close ties to the Vatican, Andreotti was known as much for his icy put-downs and aphorisms as his Realpolitik.
"He was as cunning as a fox," Bobo Craxi, a junior foreign minister and the son of late Andreotti ally Bettino Craxi, told news channel Sky TG 24.
As senator-for-life Andreotti continued to take part in political life up to his death, living in a luxury apartment building opposite the Vatican.
Born in Rome on January 14, 1919, he was elected to parliament in 1946 and became a junior minister -- at the start of a lengthy career in which he served as a government minister 21 times.
He was known for his love of intrigue and forged his career with the pro-Catholic Christian Democratic party, which helped rebuild Italy after the war but was disbanded in the early 1990s under the weight of multiple corruption scandals.
With his stooped figure and bespectacled, hangdog expression, Andreotti was a controversial figure associated with a period of extremist political militancy that rocked Italy in the 1970s and 1980s.
At various points in his career he was nicknamed "The Untouchable", "The Black Pope" and "The Divo" in an award-winning 2008 film on his life.
"There is a bad habit in our newspapers of referring to Andreotti as Beelzebub. We should stop it. Beelzebub might start suing," Indro Montanelli, a famous Italian journalist, once said.
Andreotti was once convicted to 24 years in prison for ordering the murder of investigative journalist Mino Pecorelli in 1979 after a high-profile trial, but an appeals court cleared him in 2003 and he served no time in prison.
The accusations lingered, however, particularly after testimony provided by mafia turncoats who alleged that he had met with Cosa Nostra dons.
"I'm being blamed for everything, except for the Punic Wars because I was too young then," the caustic senator, who became famous for his put-downs, once said in an ironic reference to the battles between ancient Rome and Carthage.
"I know when I die I will not have to answer for Pecorelli or the mafia. Other things yes. But on those two things my papers are in order," he said.
Andreotti was also blamed for his intransigence when his political rival Aldo Moro, a former prime minister, was kidnapped by the far-left militant Red Brigades group in 1978.
As prime minister, Andreotti refused to negotiate and Moro was found dead in the boot of a car parked on a Rome backstreet after two months in captivity.
Andreotti habitually attended mass every morning even when in office and helped shape the Christian Democratic party founded by Alcide de Gasperi.
"While Alcide spoke to God, Andreotti speaks to the clergy" was a popular quip while he was in power -- a reference to his use of the political influence of the Roman Catholic Church.
Marco Tarchi, a professor of political science at the University of Florence, once said: "He knows all the corridors of power and the underbelly of power and he does not hesitate to use any means necessary."
A foreign minister under the Socialist Craxi in the early 1980s, he forged an opening to the Arab world and the Soviet bloc.
"If I had been born in a refugee camp in Lebanon, maybe I would have been a terrorist too," he once said.
The United States never really trusted him despite his staunch anti-Communist credentials and, observers say, rightly so as Libya was tipped off by Italy about an imminent US bombardment in April 1986.
He was the butt of many jokes and was popularly dubbed "The Hunchback".
A famous comedy sketch once represented Andreotti ringing a doorbell to hell and the devil opening the door and saying: "Daddy's home!"
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