Silvio Berlusconi, in an act of either unbelievable spinelessness or unfathomable cynicism, has backtracked on his promise to begin withdrawing troops by September.
According to
L'Unità:
All day yesterday, confronted by the calls to order arriving first from Tony Blair and then from George W. Bush, the premier woked hard to deny what he had affermed the other evening, during a televised appearance with Bruno Vespa
In any case, "with regard to the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, a precise date was never fixed. He, the man who had explicitly spoken of the month of September for the beginning of the operation of withdrawal, hurries to specify that "that was just a hope" because "the withdrawal must be decided in concordance with the allies". This is the formula decided upon... in order to put a patch on the declarations of the premier which the allies have interpreted as a grave faux-pas.
In other words, our omnipotent emperor and his subcommandante in London are getting very very upset and Silvio doesn't want to continue to provoke the ruthless ire of Sugar Daddy George. After all, what would puny helpless little Italy do without US-controlled NATO military bases dotting the entire peninsula. And those promises of oil and reconstruction contracts that W. promised me in his private telephone calls? Oh no!!!!!!
Berlusconi who loves to repeat incessantly that from the time he came into power the Italian governement has finally become a respected player on the international scene has clamorously slipped up precesily on the issue of foreign policy. He has performed a harakiri. He thought that he could use his habitual method of making announcements, to which it certainly isn't necessary that actions will follow, even on the situation in Iraq. So much the more so since for electoral purposes to begin to speak of withdrawal could turn out to be usefel both for himself and for his British friend. Blair, however, did not seem very grateful.
First he and then Bush asked him for an accounting and an explanation of his announcement.. During question time in the House of Commons, the British PM said clearly that "there is no agreement" on this hypthesis "because neither we, nor Italia have fixed a date for withdrawal. George, too, got on the phone to ask for clarification from Berlusconi. The offical justification: they were just discussing the presidency of the World Bank. But the President explicitly asked if something had changed in the attitude of the Italian governenment. The assurances were not long in coming. "An intrenational crisis? No way. It doesn't exist" Berlusconi emphasized.
An electoral ruse with the goal of confounding the Italian public, who overwhelmingly oppose the Iraq war, on the actual position of the center-right coalition with respect to withdrawal and, thereby, improve it's chances of success in the upcoming regional elections?
With Blair there is "no misunderstanding". To Bush "was given the certainty that if the US can count on any ally, that ally is Italy".... Too bad. He denies that we're dealing with an operation whose goal is electoral gain even though in the columns of his friendly newpaper "Foglio" he announded "mission accomplished" with respect to the intervention in Iraq. But, If "electoral propaganda" really was the goal of this project, he spoke too soon. He kicked the ball into his own net.
Just as I expected.....