As Minister Andreotti encouraged diplomacy between the United States and the Soviet Union and improving Italian links with Arab countries. In this respect he followed a line similar to that of Craxi, with whom he had an otherwise troubled political relationship. The Italian authorities had banned the "Lion of the Desert" war film about the Second Italo-Senussi War during the Italian colonization of Libya, because, in the words of Andreotti, it was "damaging to the honor of the army".