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June 8th,
2007 - Bush to Italy as Americans Go on Trial |
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Bush to Italy as Americans Go
on Trial Irish Examiner June 8, 2007 The state of US-Italy ties
may best be revealed by what takes place in a Milan courtroom just hours
before US President George Bush arrives today. A group of 26 Americans are
due to go on trial in the first prosecution involving the CIA’s extraordinary
rendition programme. The US president’s visit
comes at a time of cool relations between the two allies. Premier Romano Prodi’s
centre-left government has spared no criticism of all major US policies, has
completed the pullout of troops in Iraq and has refused to beef up Italy’s
contingent in Afghanistan. Another major irritant is
Italy’s prosecution of Americans in two separate cases. Along with the 26 Americans
on trial for the abduction of an Egyptian cleric in Milan, a US soldier is on
trial in Rome for the March 2005 killing of an Italian spy in Baghdad. In both cases, the US
citizens are being tried in absentia. It is a contrast from June
2004, the last time Bush was on an official visit to Italy. He was greeted by Premier
Silvio Berlusconi as “my friend George”. Berlusconi also famously
said he agreed with Washington, regardless of what the American position
might be. Things have changed since
Prodi took over last year, though. Prodi has not visited the White House,
though he met with Bush on the sidelines of international summits such as the
2006 Group of Eight in Russia. By contrast, in 2001
Berlusconi went to the White House five months after he became premier. “In Washington there’s a
renewed sense of mistrust toward Italy, seen as an unreliable country,” said
Massimo Teodori, a professor of US history and the author of numerous books
on American affairs. He cited Italy’s policy in
Afghanistan, the legal cases and what he said was a “clearly anti-American
hard-line left within the government”. In the run-up to Bush’s
visit, Prodi made a point of asking his Cabinet ministers not to take part in
the anti-Bush demonstrations being planned in Rome for tomorrow, when Bush is
scheduled to meet Prodi and visit the Vatican for his first talks with Pope
Benedict XVI. Officials in both Rome and
Washington have sought to minimise the contrasts. “We’ve got a good
relationship,” Bush said of Prodi in an interview to Italy’s La Stampa and
other newspapers before his trip to Europe. “Italy has been a strong partner
in a lot of areas, and I appreciate it.” Prodi, whose government
includes Communists and other radical leftists, has insisted that frank
criticism among friends does not endanger their relations. “There is no worry or
anxiety, we are not going into this meeting with a guilt complex … but with
great pleasure to see an ally with whom we share solid and intense
relations,” said an Italian diplomatic source. The premier gave the go
ahead to plans to expand a US base in northern Italy, despite massive
protests, including from members of his own coalition. A longtime opponent of the
Iraq war, Prodi completed the pullout of Italian troops – which had been sent
in by Berlusconi – in December. He sent 2,500 troops to an
expanded UN force in Lebanon, and kept Italy’s 2,000-strong contingent in
Afghanistan as part of the Nato mission, a commitment praised by Bush in the
interview. However, the Italian
government did not heed calls by the Bush administration to some European
allies to provide more troops to fight Taliban in the south and lift
restrictions on how and where soldiers can fight. Rome’s long-standing
strategy of negotiating with kidnappers in hostage situations also exposed
rifts. A recent case where five
Taliban prisoners were swapped for an Italian journalist abducted in
Afghanistan provoked a sharp reaction by the State Department. Foreign Minister Massimo
D’Alema has been critical of the American strategy in Afghanistan, saying
military power alone would not solve the problems. But his proposal for an
international conference on Afghanistan has largely fallen on deaf years. D’Alema has also criticised
Washington for not discussing its missile defence system in the Nato-Russia
Council. “This is unusual and the source of a certain amount of worry,” he
said this week. “It is as if the Italian
leadership was frozen at the time of the crisis between Europe and the United
States in 2003,” when the Iraq war was launched, said Andrea Romano,
professor of contemporary history at Rome’s Tor Vergata University. “But now other European
leaderships are moving on,” he said, referring to Germany and France. “The
risk we face is not that of becoming enemies of the United States, but of
becoming useless.” Bush was travelling to Rome
from Heiligendamm, Germany, where he was attending the G8 summit. External link: http://www.irishexaminer.com/breaking/story.asp?j=94873904&p=94874zx6&n=94874284 |