Marcello Serafini

Marcello Serafini’s Washington work included direct responsibility for civil aviation negotiations. As the embassy’s commercial minister, he led the Italian delegation in talks with American officials in February and May 1976. Italy sought changes to the 1970 air agreement, including a better balance of routes and tighter coordination of airline capacity as fuel costs rose. The February session produced a memorandum and agreement to meet again; the May talks also addressed American use of Boeing 747 freighters. ¹

On 1 June 1976 Serafini represented the embassy at the White House ceremony where President Gerald Ford signed supplemental appropriations providing disaster relief to Italy. Ford’s daily diary records an exchange of remarks with him, identifying him as minister-counsellor. ²

He later became ambassador in Kenya, where the embassy’s official history places his service between January 1980 and May 1983. A contemporary report records him at the opening of an exhibition of Ugandan artists at Nairobi’s Italian Cultural Institute in November 1980. The exhibition included batiks and mosaics made from banana fibre. ^{3, 4}