ROME (Reuters) - Radical Palestinian leader Abu Abbas, sentenced to life in jail in absentia for the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise liner, said in an interview on Wednesday he hankered after the `dolce vita` and wanted to visit Italy. "I`m granting you this interview in the hope that Italy will overturn my life sentence," Abbas told La Repubblica newspaper in an interview from Gaza. "Your women are too beautiful and your food is too good not to visit," he said with a smile. Italy let Abbas go after the 1985 hijacking of the cruise liner, in which gunmen shot dead wheelchair-bound Jewish American passenger Leon Klinghoffer and dumped his body overboard, despite requests from Washington that he be arrested. Abbas did not physically take part in the hijacking, but he was aboard an Egypt Air civilian aircraft with the hijackers which was forced down by U.S. fighter planes in Sicily. The authorities allowed Abbas to leave the country but he was later sentenced to life in prison in absentia. La Repubblica said Abbas had returned to Gaza last week after moving between Middle Eastern capitals. Abbas said Italy was alone in pursuing him since "a couple of years ago America cancelled its arrest warrant for me", and described the court case in Italy as a "political trial". "But Italy is such a beautiful country, even its prisons can`t be terrible. I prefer to consider that sentence as an invitation to come on a little visit, sooner or later," he said. Asked whether he had thanked the then Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi and Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti, for allowing him to get away, Abbas said: "Of course. I thanked them several times through various channels and they replied via the Palestinian Liberation Organisation." Craxi, hounded out of office in the "Tangentopoli" scandals, has chalked up a string of corruption convictions and has jail sentences totalling more than 25 years hanging over him, some pending appeals. He now lives in self-imposed exile in Tunisia. Andreotti is on trial on charges of protecting the Sicilian Mafia while he held various public offices in his long career. In a separate case, he faces charges of complicity in the 1979 murder of a journalist whom prosecutors allege was killed by the Mafia. Andreotti denies the charges. Abbas said he was "sorry" about Klinghoffer`s death, but the loss of innocent lives was something "that happens in a war". Asked what he thought of terrorism now, Abbas said he preferred to call it a "fight for freedom". "It was necessary to let the world know that there was a problem in Palestine. When the world listened to us, we stopped," he said.