Berlusconi basks in G-8 spotlight

ROME — Premier Silvio Berlusconi will bask in his role as host of the Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations — a break from the barrage of attacks from a starlet scandal that has engulfed him at home.

But that doesn’t mean his moment in the spotlight will be free of embarrassment.

His wife will not be heading the spouses program — she has announced she is divorcing him over his fondness for young women.

And the media attacks on Berlusconi’s fitness to lead the country have become so severe that Italy’s largely ceremonial president felt constrained to call for a pause in the hostilities.

“It is only right given the delicacy of this appointment to have a truce in the polemics,” President Giorgio Napolitano appealed to politicians a few days before the leaders of the world’s largest economies gather Wednesday in the earthquake-battered city of L’Aquila.

Berlusconi himself is prone to gaffes and may get himself into trouble, as when he described U.S. President Barack Obama as “tanned” or compared a German lawmaker to a Nazi concentration camp guard.

It is uncertain whether Berlusconi will get to meet and pose for photos with Michelle Obama or any of the other spouses, who have their separate program while the leaders are meeting and sleeping in the Spartan setting of a police academy outside the center of L’Aquila.

“This is a work summit and there are no social events planned,” said a Berlusconi aide, speaking under the customary condition of anonymity.

Berlusconi has been on the defensive at home ever since his wife accused him of picking starlets and showgirls as candidates in European Parliament elections and for having attended the birthday party of an 18-year-old model.

Since then, three young women — including a high-class prostitute — have told Italian newspapers that they attended parties at the premier’s residences, with two saying they were paid €1,000 ($1,400) by a Berlusconi acquaintance to show up.

Prosecutors in Bari have opened an investigation into the acquaintance. The escort, Patrizia D’Addario, has said she spent the night with Berlusconi after a Nov. 4 party, while the other women have shown off jewelry the premier purportedly gave them and told tales of dancing until dawn while Berlusconi sang songs, told jokes and boasted of visits to the White House.

Berlusconi has denied knowing D’Addario and said he never paid anyone for sex. He has denounced the scandal as a “garbage” smear campaign and has insisted “Italians want me this way.”

Still, reports swirled this week that several European newspapers were competing to buy compromising photos of Berlusconi and publish them as the summit opens.

In an interview with Associated Press Television on Monday, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini dismissed the allegations against Berlusconi as “rubbish.” He referred to the scandal as a “campaign” by those inside and outside the country “who don’t love Italy.”

The program for the spouses includes a tour of sites in L’Aquila, damaged in the April 6 earthquake that killed nearly 300 people, museums in Rome and a meeting with U.N. food agencies based in Rome on the role of women in fighting hunger. Some will also have audiences with Pope Benedict XVI.

In the days leading to the summit, Berlusconi expanded his presence on the world stage with a flurry of diplomacy aimed, at least in part, at diverting attention from the sex scandal.

He showed up at the last minute June 27 at a meeting in Corfu, Greece, of foreign ministers of the NATO-Russia Council — the only head of government there other than the host, Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Italian journalists in an interview published Sunday that Moscow enjoys “particularly friendly relations” with Berlusconi.

“We often discuss the international agenda with him,” said Medvedev.

Berlusconi’s diplomacy may be paying off.

A recent poll showed Berlusconi’s popularity had only dipped two statistically insignificant percentage points in recent weeks — from 51 percent to 49 percent.

“I don’t think that these difficulties are going to affect his capacity to have a leadership role in the summit or his capacity to mediate at the summit,” Franco Pavoncello, a political analyst at John Cabot University in Rome told AP Television News.

“I think this is very much part of his personality, and I think he will be certainly at his best in this situation,” Pavoncello said.

The scandal is not the only challenge he faces at the G-8 summit. He has long insisted that the Italian economy is suffering less than elsewhere, because Italian banks weren’t heavily exposed to the most damaging financial instruments and the high level of personal savings that has given many a cushion against the crisis.

But unemployment has risen to 7.4 percent in the first quarter while Italy’s budget deficit has surged to 9.3 percent, the highest level in a decade — an indication that things are not as rosy as officials claim.

Correspondent Colleen Barry contributed from Milan.