Politics News Event

(ANSA) - Rome, November 13 - An Italo-Serbian summit to establish a strategic partnership between the two countries opened in Rome on Friday with a meeting between Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and Serbian President Boris Tadic.

Serbian premier Mirko Cvetkovic was also present at the meeting , which aims to lay the groundwork for a wide range of economic and cultural accords.

Heading into the meeting, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini reiterated Italy's support for the Balkan country's bid to join the European Union.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 13 - Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi showed his playful side again when he moved a tall Serbian minister away from him in a photo op on Friday.

Berlusconi, who is among the world's shorter leaders, looked in a tight spot when he realised Serbia's towering Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovic was looming over him.

Amid general amusement, he quickly moved the giant minister to the end of the row and replaced him with a shorter official, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic.

The fun-loving Italian premier is known for taking the stuffiness out of formal occasions with jokes and quips.

(ANSA) - Milan, November 13 - Over 90 police officers raided a premises occupied by leftist activists in Milan on Friday to arrest five anarchists accused of robbery.

The suspects allegedly beat up staff at a student copy shop last fall where they photocopied fliers without paying for them.

Police said the large number of officers involved were intended to keep order and head off resistance at the squat, a well-known hub for political fringe groups.

Only one of the suspects arrested was taken to jail, Valerio Ferrandi, while the rest were placed under house arrest.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 13 - Italy's public debt in September set a new record, climbing to 1.7868 trillion euros from 1.7575 in August, the Bank of Italy said on Friday.

With the exception of June, when it dipped slightly, Italy's debt has been setting consecutive records since last February.

The Bank of Italy also reported that due to the recession tax revenue for the first nine months of the year had fallen by 3.5% over the same period last year.

In August, the eight-month drop was 2.5%. photo: Bank of Italy Governor Mario Draghi

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - The centre-left opposition on Thursday blasted a bill setting a time cap on trials presented to the Senate.

Put forward by members of Premier Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, the measure places a two-year cap on first trials and appeals, giving legal proceedings a maximum of six years before they expire under the statute of limitations.

Majority MPs say the bill is a much needed reform to the sluggish pace of Italy's judicial system, but opposition critics say it is a veiled attempt to block pending trials against the premier.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - Prominent figures in the Italian government and the Vatican both appealed for a change in attitudes towards immigrants on Thursday.

Italy's House Speaker Gianfranco Fini called for the country's citizenship laws to be amended, while Vatican 'migration minister' Antonio Maria Veglio asked for human dignity to be given priority over people's legal status.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - Premier Silvio Berlusconi's wife Veronica Lario has reportedly already filed divorce papers but plans to keep a low profile on the proceedings, friends told ANSA on Thursday.

The sources said Lario, 52, was abroad at the moment but would not be willing to talk to the media about what she considers a very personal issue once she returns to Italy.

Her lawyer, Cristina Morello, declined to confirm a report in Thursday's edition of the Milan daily Corriere della Sera that Lario had begun divorce proceedings.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - A proposed cap on trials put before the Senate on Thursday would be ''devastating'' for the Italian judicial system, according to the Italian guild of judges and prosecutors (ANM).

In a statement issued after the bill was presented, the magistrates' union said the reform would annul over 100,000 cases with ''devastating effects on the Italian legal system''.

The ANM said it would ''inevitably lead to trials for serious crimes expiring under the statue of limitations'' and expressed ''strong reservations'' about its constitutionality.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - The only way to resolve the problem of the Taliban in Afghanistan is to defeat them militarily, Kabul's ambassador to Rome said here on Thursday.

Taking part in a debate at the foreign ministry with Italy's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Massimo Iannucci, Musa M. Maroofi said that "the biggest problem in Afghanistan today are the Taliban, the terrorists. If we eliminate this problem we resolve 75% of our country's problems".

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini will attend the inauguration of re-elected Afghan President Hamid Karzai on November 19, the Italian foreign ministry said Thursday.

Last week Frattini called Karzai's re-election ''a new beginning for Afghanistan''.

Frattini said he and other international representatives were going to celebrate Karzai's re-election.

But he stressed that "we also expect him to rid his country of corruption and sign a new contract with his people''.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has called for a ''24-hour hunger strike against hunger'' ahead of next week's World Food Summit on Food Security in Rome.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said ''we are suggesting that everyone in the world who wants to show solidarity with the one billion hungry people on this planet go on hunger strike this weekend''.

''I personally will begin a day-long fast on Saturday morning,'' Diouf vowed.

(ANSA) - Bucharest, November 12 - Increased funding would pump new blood into the Central European Initiative (CEI) and give it more political clout, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said here on Thursday.

Speaking to a meeting of CEI foreign ministers, Frattini said that while Italy, the biggest financial contributor to the CEI, did not want to reduce its support for the group, "other European Union members in the initiative need to demonstrate a greater commitment" by increasing their contributions.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - A justice reform package to shorten the length of Italian trials was presented to the Senate on Thursday by members of Premier Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party.

The draft law was agreed upon Tuesday by Berlusconi and House Minister Gianfranco Fini, who explained the bill was intended to speed up the snail's pace of Italian justice.

But opposition critics have slammed the bill as a ploy to block two pending trials against the premier, both of which are due to start this month.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - An Italian housewives union filed an official complaint with Treasury Minister Giulio Tremonti on Thursday for not doing more to help disadvantaged families pay their mortgages.

Federcasalinghe pointed to recent Bank of Italy figures indicated that 320,000 families were spending more than a third of their income on mortgage payments against a national average of 17%.

The union's president, Federica Rossi Gasparrini, accused the economy minister of stalling financial assistance approved by parliament to help new homeowners.

(ANSA) - Palermo, November 12 - Police on Thursday busted what they consider to be a major drug trafficking ring and arrested four people, all members of the same family.

The four are believed to have ran the illegal drug trade here in the Sicilian capital as well as the city of Agrigento.

They were named as: Pietro Cannata, 54; Antonio Cannata, 34; Daniele Cannata 26; and Nicolo' Cannata, 34, who was already in custody.