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Berlusconi hosts G8 as scandals weaken credibility

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-02 14:28

ROME: Next week's G8 summit in Italy may briefly take the spotlight off the personal scandals dogging Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, but will also put to the test his claims of leadership on the world stage.

President Giorgio Napolitano has asked Italian politicians for a "truce" during the Group of Eight summit on July 8-10 to avoid harming Italy's performance in such a high-profile event.

Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi holds a news conference on a cruise ship docked in Naples June 29, 2009 before next week's G8 summit to be held in Italy's L'Aquila. [Agencies]

Berlusconi, whose guests include US President Barack Obama attending his first G8 summit, has plunged himself into diplomacy to try to shake off the relentless talk at home about his divorce, womanising and hedonistic parties.

Italy is also keen for the meeting in L'Aquila to erase the memories of the violence that marred its last G8 summit in Genoa in 2001, in Berlusconi's second term, and to help survivors of the April earthquake in the town that killed nearly 300 people.

Giampiero Massolo, the Italian diplomat preparing the meeting, calls it a summit of "sobriety and solidarity", where leaders will stay in a police barracks rather than luxury hotels and be invited to see the quake damage for themselves.

But "sobriety" is not a quality much associated with Italy's premier, especially after revelations that escorts were paid to attend parties at his homes and that his wife filed for divorce over his eye for aspiring young models and women politicians.

"SUBVERSION"

Related readings:  Italy's Berlusconi denies he paid women  Premier Berlusconi in new scandal  Berlusconi 'unaware party girls were paid'  Italy's Berlusconi hit by female escort allegations  Berlusconi says nude pics 'innocent'

Berlusconi accuses a hostile media and courts of "subversion", mindful that his first government eventually collapsed in 1994 after a newspaper published court documents just as he hosted an international security summit in Naples.

The scandals seem to have sapped some of the 72-year-old premier's unusually high approval ratings and self-confidence.

While never short on bombast - proclaiming his government the "strongest and most stable in the whole Western world" on Monday - Berlusconi says his support in his own private polls is now 62 percent, compared to 75 percent just over a month ago.

One newspaper poll this weekend had his support slipping to 49 percent from 51 percent, with the biggest drop among women, youngsters and practising Roman Catholics - some of the people most likely to disapprove of sexism and philandering.

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