Attacks on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in the British press have hit an especially raw nerve as he hosts this year’s G8 summit and some Italian newspapers have had enough.

The summit has come at a particularly sensitive time for the beleaguered Italian leader, who has been dogged for weeks by salacious scandals involving allegations he has a soft spot for underage women and has entertained escort girls.

Britain’s irreverent media have had a field day, delving into his exotic personal life and publishing lurid cartoons of the veteran Berlusconi cavorting with naked women.

Adding insult to injury, the British press have also led the charge in accusing Berlusconi of chaotic organisation of the annual G8 knees-up, with a fanciful story in the Guardian suggesting Italy might be ejected from the rich nations club.

In an image-conscious country where looking bad is a unpardonable sin, that was the final straw for some Italians and a counter-offensive is underway.
   
Unsurprisingly, Il Giornale newspaper, owned by Berlusconi’s family, has led the charge.

“The attack on Italy? These English are still racist,” the paper wrote on its front page on Friday, taking umbrage at a cartoon showing a grinning Berlusconi holding up a bra.

But other papers have also decided to put their foot down.

Rome’s Il Messaggero daily, taking aim at the “spoilt Anglo-Saxons”, dedicated a whole page on Friday to criticism of the British economy.

“One must say, once and for all, that on the real economy you can’t give lessons to anyone, least of all Italy,” it wrote.

Italy’s television, which has paid little attention to the Berlusconi scandals, has meanwhile presented the l’Aquila summit as an international triumph of heroic proportions.

Italian diplomats have also been drafted to the cause, with embassies abroad phoning up major media companies to pass on praise from U.S. President Barack Obama for the meeting.

Certainly Berlusconi has defied his critics in putting on a smooth, sleek show amidst the rubble of the April earthquake.

But while the Italian style is, as ever, impressive, the substance is perhaps less striking.

Unlike previous G8 hosts, Berlusconi seems to have focused his attention more on logistics than the issues, leaving other leaders to take charge of the toughest dossiers.

Obama chaired the crucial global warming talks, French President Nicolas Sarkozy led discussion on Iran and when it came to discussion on Africa, Italy was in the embarrassing position of being the meanest aid provider at the table.

But don’t expect to see such diplomatic details to get prominence in the Italian press!

And while many analysts have questioned the outcome of the talks, suggesting for example that the climate accord fell far short of what was needed, the Italian press is once again accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative.

And of course, it is all thanks to Italy. “Tired but satisfied, Berlusconi showed once again how he can achieve the best results in these occasions,” Il Messaggero said.

Photo: POOL New/Reuters

Fresh from his success on the TV show Dancing with the Stars, Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, grandson of the last king of Italy, is campaigning in June’s European elections for Italy’s small centrist party, the Union of Christian Democrats (UDC).

“I had offers from other parties but I feel culturally close to the UDC and its leader Pier Ferdinando Casini,” Filiberto told Reuters on the campaign trail in the small northwestern Piedmont town of Crescentino. “I feel close to its family values, its Christian roots, its ties with the homeland, which I have supported since I’ve been in Italy.”

Emanuele Filiberto, born in Switzerland in 1972, is a member of the House of Savoy, the Italian ruling dynasty whose male heirs were exiled in 1948 because of its relations with the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. The family was allowed back into Italy in 2002.

“I did Dancing with the Stars to get myself better known by Italians,” said Filiberto, who won the competition and is standing in the European elections for the northwestern region of Italy, where the Savoy dynasty has its origins. “First and foremost, however, I feel Italian and since my return to Italy I’ve always wanted to do what I can to help my country.” In Crescentino, he was mobbed by locals at the town fair.

Filiberto, married to French actress Clotilde Courau, is not new to politics and stood for election with his “Valori e Futuro” party in Italian parliamentary elections last year. That foray into politics ended unsuccessfully but many think the backing of Casini’s UDC will give him more appeal and visibility this time round.

The UDC, heir to the once powerful Christian Democrat party, won about 5.6 percent of the vote in Italy’s 2008 elections. According to the polls, it is expected to get 6-7 percent of the vote in the European elections compared with almost 40 percent for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party.

Filiberto bemoans recent controversy over the fielding of attractive young women  as candidates for  Berlusconi’s ruling centre-right party in the European elections. He said more needed to be done to promote the image of Italy overseas.

“I’ve travelled the world and I’m afraid Italy has never been taken seriously. That’s a pity since the country deserves much more with its wealth of craftsmen, its small- and medium-sized companies, its inventors, its artists,” he said.

Filiberto — who intends to do his campaigning on the road as well as on the Internet through Facebook — is keen to help his constituency by promoting tourism and ecology, fighting the cause of the disabled and supporting the region’s small businesses.

“Hearing about Fiat (the Italian auto maker based in the northwest’s biggest city, Turin) and what’s happening there is great but let’s not forget there are hundreds of small enterprises suffering as we speak and they need help.”

PHOTO: Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia (FILE PICTURE)

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the consummate campaigner. No matter where he finds himself, the indefatigable 72-year-old always makes sure the cameras are squarely on him.

Although he is quick to flash a smile to his supporters, Berlusconi can be just as fast in delivering barbed words to his critics. And when he does not have the time to do it, his supporters are more than happy to oblige.

The newspaper Il Libero, for instance, uses its front page to wage war against his adversaries, old and new.

When his wife called for a divorce after criticising his party for considering former actresses and TV showgirls to run in the European elections, it lashed out. It published old photos of her baring her breasts on a theatrical stage and ran a headline telling her that she was of the same ilk.

Il Libero also uses inserts to great effect. Last week, it started publishing a serial recounting the life of Berlusconi.

Reminiscent of the booklet about his life that Berlusconi sent to voters’ homes ahead of the 2006 election, the serial highlights in glowing terms his transformation from cruise ship crooner to real estate mogul to media magnate to prime minister.

“He is not a common man,” Vittorio Feltri, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, tells Reuters.

The timing of its publication could not be better.

Not only does it come ahead of the European elections in June, but also at a time when Italy’s left-wing press is focusing on one of the reasons for his wife wanting a divorce: her accusation that he had an affair with a teenaged girl, something which Berlusconi denies.

Entitled “Berlusconi, as he is: (The) life, conquests, battles and passions of a political man unique in the world,” the serial is replete with photos of Berlusconi as well as articles illustrating every aspect of his life. There is one about him choosing the flowers for the garden at his villa, especially the crocus, which he cherishes for its “delicate colours and particular scent”.

One of the 16 inserts in the serial speaks of his admiration for Barack Obama despite the “privileged” relationship he enjoyed with former U.S. President George W. Bush. It nevertheless publishes his joke about Obama being “suntanned”, dismissing the outrage that it caused by criticising the scandalised “radical chic” for not being able to take a joke.

Il Giornale is even more fervent in its defence of Berlusconi, especially since the newspaper is owned by his brother, Paolo.

In its latest issue, it dedicates two pages to criticising foreign journalists for giving just as much attention to the wife’s accusation as the left-wing press.

As for the serial on Berlusconi, Il Libero’s Feltri says the newspaper decided to produce it because the upcoming European elections had heightened its readers’ interest in politics.

Its publication had already led to a 17 percent jump in sales, he says.

“Silvio is one of the biggest sellers,” he says.

Although the divorce from his wife has taken a few points away from his popularity, Berlusconi still finds favour among 53 percent of Italians surveyed in the latest independent poll.

Feltri says he would be willing to put out a serial about a left-wing politician but he had difficulty finding someone as compelling as Berlusconi.

“They don’t sell,” he says.

PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi smiles to photographers after meeting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Moscow May 16, 2009. REUTERS/Maxim Shipenikov

Did Italy unwittingly trigger the crisis in South Ossetia and then play a central role in stopping it? It may not be the view in most of the world but you could come to that conclusion from reading some Italian papers.

First, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was quoted in a report by French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy on Wednesday, which was reproduced in full on the front page and pages 2 and 3 of Corriere della Sera, as saying that he was first alerted to the situation in South Ossetia by reports in the Italian press that he saw while on a dieting holiday in Italy.

“I am in Italy, for a slimming cure, and I am about to leave for Beijing. Then, in the Italian papers, I read: ‘Preparations for war in Georgia.’ You understand? There I am, relaxing, in Italy, and I read that my country is preparing for war! Realising something is wrong, I quickly return to Tbilisi,” Saakashvili told his French interviewer.

Besides the intriguing idea of anyone trying to lose weight in Italy, the piece suggests the Italian press had a central role in the Georgian president’s decision to try to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

According to another Italian media outlook, the weekly magazine Tempi (on their website only, since the print version has been suspended for summer holidays), Italy also played a central role in stopping the five-day conflict that it may have contributed to starting.

Tempi quoted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as saying that it was he who persuaded Vladimir Putin not to let his tanks go all the way to Tbilisi, thus avoiding what Berlusconi said would have been a “useless bloodbath”.

When Reuters took the precaution of checking the quotes with Berlusconi’s press office, we were first told: “If that’s what they write, go ahead and pick it up.” We also passed on the quotes to Moscow to get a response from Putin’s office, to clarify whether Berlusconi really has such influence on the Russian premier and former president.

Very soon, Berlusconi’s office told us it was putting out a statement to deny the juiciest quotes in the Tempi interview, where Berlusconi was quoted as saying: “Thank God my friend Putin listened to me. Otherwise there is no bloody way the Russian tanks would have stopped 15 km from Tbilisi. We have avoided a useless bloodbath.”

The quote seemed to echo Berlusconi’s election jingle “Meno male che Silvio c’e” (”thank goodness for Silvio”). But it was too good to be true, according to his press office at Palazzo Chigi. They said these quotes were not legitimate, were not the kind of language Berlusconi would have used anyway, and were the fruit of a misunderstanding at best, at worst pure invention.

The Italian prime minister, now in his third term in power, does have the ear of the Russian leader, who was the first foreign leader to visit him after the Italian conservative leader’s election victory in April, at his villa in Sardinia (see picture). The newspaper owned by Berlusconi’s brother, Il Giornale, reported on Aug. 12 — the day Russia ordered a halt to the fighting — that the Italian leader was mediating and “exercising moral-suasion” on Putin. The same paper later quoted Berlusconi as saying: “Putin told me ‘Talk to Bush’. And Bush told me ‘Talk to Putin’. In the end we achieved a major result.”

“Should I wait until she’s finished?” asks a soldier from an Italian Alpine regiment, in their distinctive feathered Tyrolean-style hat, to her police colleagues as they patrol an area of Turin notorious for addicts known as “Toxic Park” and see a woman shooting up.

Incidents like this one reported in Corriere della Sera newspaper seem to support Italian police unions’ doubts about Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s initiative, which began this week, to put 3,000 soldiers on the streets of 10 cities for the next six months to help the police fight a supposed crime wave. Some police officers believe military personnel, even those hardened by peace missions abroad, do not have the training needed to fight crime.

But as the first few hundred soldiers took to the streets this week — wearing barrack-dress uniform with sidearms only for street patrols, but camouflage combat gear and rifles for guard duty on “sensitive” targets like embassies and railway stations — many city mayors hailed the exercise as a success. The military man in charge of the operation, Giuseppe Valotto, said the public reaction had been “incredibly positive” and helped improve citizens’ perception of their own safety. Soldiers even notched up a few “collars” in their first few days on joint patrol with the police, hauling in 12 African immigrants in Naples accused of faking fashion brands, chasing a thief through the streets of Bari and nabbing a man in Milan who had snatched the takings of a bar from the till.

Being style-conscious Italians, of course, the troops carried off their street duties with the requisite swagger and Rome’s right-wing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, who has worried about them scaring off the tourists, appeared taken with the Grenadiers of Sardinia helping out with guard duties in Rome, saying: “They looked like they were out of a film, really perfect, they have a great image.”

But the political opposition, and the media, has asked if it is really necessary to draft in a token number of soldiers in a country that already has 230,000 police and carabinieri, and where the crime rate is not alarmingly high compared to the rest of Europe anyway. A new study by research centre Censis released this week shows, for example, that Italy has the lowest murder rate of the biggest European countries and one which is falling already. One union leader suggested the military should be drafted into Italian building sites instead to combat a growing cause of death among Italians — fatal accidents at work, where Italy ranks top in Europe, according to Censis.

The opposition also points out that Berlusconi has mobilised the military while simultaneously reducing funding for the police in the budget.

The foreign press appears sceptical too, with the Financial Times saying in a comment piece this week that Italy’s new conservative government might to well to focus instead on combatting corruption, where the country has the worst record in the European Union apart from Greece, according to Transparency International’s global corruption Index. Forbes magazine called the operation a “diversion tactic” by Berlusconi to shift the focus away from the country’s sagging economy, which it said has the lowest growth in the euro zone and is heading for recession.

But, as often seems to happen in Italy, Berlusconi comes in for fiercer criticism from the foreign press than from the domestic audience. While putting soldiers on the streets to combat a crime wave of dubious proportions might spark protest in some countries, so far it has been limited to a few banners and handbills in the capital saying “Free Rome”.