Word: berlusconi
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...Call the story "The Decline of the European Democratic Left." The SPD has been trailing Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) by up to 15 points for months. The French Socialists were trounced by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 and have never recovered. The Italian left was bested by Silvio Berlusconi last year. And in Britain, the Labour party is staring at near certain defeat at the hands of Tory leader David Cameron in elections to be held by next year. (See pictures of world leaders on vacation...
...afternoon, a key ally of Berlusconi's, Northern League chief Umberto Bossi, was declaring that "the mission in Afghanistan has reached its end" and calling for Italy's troops to be brought home by Christmas. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, a die-hard Berlusconi loyalist, said Friday there are no immediate plans for a pullout but expressed serious doubts about the situation in Afghanistan. "Much has to change," Frattini told the daily Corriere della Sera. "There needs to be ... more attention on the people who suffer and on reconstruction. The general vision of the mission must be changed." Frattini wants more...
...This time, the immediate message was much more ambiguous, coming as Berlusconi continues to reel from a months-long sex scandal that has shaken his bearings and loosened what should otherwise be a tight hold over Parliament and his center-right coalition. As the first reports of the Thursday-morning bombing - which also killed 10 Afghan civilians - at an outdoor market in Kabul came in, the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs both forcefully declared Italy's resolve to maintain its military presence in Afghanistan in the face of what Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa called a "cowardly" and "devious...
...Italy and elsewhere, that leaves space for populists like Bossi to harvest new supporters by leading the charge for a fast pullout. These days Berlusconi is more vulnerable to recalcitrant allies in the face of near daily blowback from a private-life scandal that began in April when his estranged wife accused him of "frequenting underage females...
...Still, columnist Romano believes that Berlusconi's nod to public doubts about Italy's role in Afghanistan is outweighed by the reality that the Prime Minister must ultimately stick with Washington. Other European leaders face the same dilemma, especially now that U.S. President Barack Obama has arrived with a new approach to diplomacy that largely jibes with Europe's. "In the end, all you can really do is keep your soldiers there and accompany them until the day that Obama sees it is O.K. for a pullback," says Romano. "It's a very passive diplomacy, but it's not irrational...