Berlusconi: anti-war all along...

Just when we thought Berlusconi had lost the capacity to surprise, he... well, surprises. After all, we have now become used to his crass comparison of the German Social Democrat Martin Schulz with a "concentration camp Kapo"; not to mention his outrageous assertion that Mussolini never killed anybody, but merely sent them "on vacation" in "international exile". His latest remarks, however, made in the run-up to the Italian general elections, are of a different type altogether.

In a recent television interview, the Italian premier has now claimed that he was against the war in Iraq all along, attempting right up until it began to dissuade Bush and Blair from their chosen course of action, and even enlisting the help of Libya's leader Colonel Gadaffi in this endeavour. Everything about this, of course, smacks more of electioneering than anything else: the timing, with the election some five months away; the content, with polls indicating that Berlusconi's support for Bush is a major handicap in a country where the public was so strongly against the war (as anyone present at the time to see the astonishing profusion of pace flags on almost every building can testify); even the chosen media outlet seems to have been selected to increase credibility, , the interview being not with Berlusconi-owned Mediaset channels or Berlusconi-controlled RAI state television, but with the independent station La 7.

Bush does not have his troubles to seek at the moment domestically, and this apparent U-turn from one of his hitherto staunchest allies in "new Europe" will almost certainly not go down well. He will have had a chance to make this clear yesterday, the day on which the interview was broadcast, as Berlusconi flew out to the States to meet him. However, they cannot, in fairness, complain too much; the Bush administration have not been shy about hanging their own allies out to dry over Iraq when domestic political expediency demanded it. Nonetheless, it seems, not without a certain degree of irony, that these anti-war comments may get Berlusconi into more trouble with his allies than any of his decidedly more outrageous interjections have to date...