Italy Tries to Make Amends With Germany

[Aidoneus]

ROME (AP) - Italy sought to make amends Tuesday for government gaffes about Germany, with Premier Silvio Berlusconi making a conciliatory phone call to the president of the European Parliament and the foreign minister insisting Germans are welcome in his country.

Berlusconi expressed regret for comparing a European Union lawmaker from Germany to a Nazi prison camp guard. The foreign minister tried to repair a riff caused when an official described Germans as ``stereotyped blondes with a hyper- nationalist pride.''

The official's remarks had prompted Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to threaten to cancel his planned vacation in Italy.

Berlusconi had already expressed his regret to Schroeder for a remark responding to pointed questions from the German lawmaker, Martin Schulz, about recent Italian laws that the premier's critics say help him skirt his legal problems.

The president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, said in a statement that Berlusconi ``expressed his regret'' during a telephone conversation Tuesday afternoon for having made ``certain expressions and comparisons which hurt the sensitivities'' of European Parliament members.

``Mr. Berlusconi added that his intentions may have been misunderstood and that in no way had he ever intended to offend,'' Cox said.

--snip--

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2883928,00.html

Between this twit and Savage, I can't decide who's "Oops, my bad" is more pathetic and fake. "You're like a Nazi death camp guard!" "just kidding.." ?!

[OldEuropean]

1. Re: Berlusconi

Yeah, his saying was really easy to be missunderstood... NOT

Alone the smirk on his face all the time says what he thinks about law and justice, Mafioso that he is.

Gosh, he controls 90% of the Italian TV market - and guess what - when they showed the coverage of the EU parliament meeting where he said the insult, the TV stations controlled by him had some "technical problems" and cut off the transmission... Duh...

With "politicans" like Bush, Blair, Berlusconi or Aznar I wonder if such kind of politicans will be normal in the future (shudder) or it is just a bad chance that we get so many idiots elected (or not) into their governments. :(