Pat Dollard | Young Americans

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, under fire at home for describing U.S. President-elect Barack Obama as “suntanned,” said on Friday he saw no need to apologize. When asked if he thought relations between the USA and Russia would change after Obama’s election, he said (through a translator): “I think Obama will get along very well with the Russian president, because they are both young, handsome, and… tanned!”

His center-left opponents called the comment racist; Berlusconi responded by saying, “Why are they taking it as something negative? If they have no sense of humour, worse for them,” he said. Later, he told Sky TV-24 Ore that his comments were meant to be “cute” and bashed those who disagreed, saying they are “imbeciles, of which there are too many.”

At a news conference, Berlusconi was brusque with an American journalist who suggested he should say sorry for the remark on Thursday.
At Friday’s news conference after a European Union summit, the reporter asked: “Prime Minister, do you realize that your comment on Obama is offensive to the United States? Why don’t you apologize?”

Berlusconi responded: “Give me a break! You have just put yourself on that list of people (imbeciles) I mentioned yesterday!”

The subject was on the front pages of most Italian newspapers on Friday.

“Berlusconi never fails to live up to our worst expectations,” said an editorial in the Rome daily La Repubblica.

Berlusconi is famed in diplomatic circles for making sometimes inappropriate quips, and highly controversial statements about Islam.

On his first meeting with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 2002, Berlusconi complimented him with the words: “Rasmussen is not only a great colleague, he’s also the best-looking prime minister in Europe.”

He added: “He’s so good looking, I’m even thinking of introducing him to my wife.”

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, He boasted of the “supremacy” and “superiority” of western civilisation and called on Europe to recognise its “common Christian roots”. Standing beside the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, at a joint press conference, he declared that he and his host “consider that the attacks on New York and Washington are attacks not only on the United States but on our civilisation, of which we are proud bearers, conscious of the supremacy of our civilisation, of its discoveries and inventions, which have brought us democratic institutions, respect for the human, civil, religious and political rights of our citizens, openness to diversity and tolerance of everything.”

He had earlier told Italian journalists covering his visit: “We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilisation, which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion.”

As if to rub salt in the wound, Mr Berlusconi added: “This respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries”.

He sparked a minor diplomatic incident in 2005 by suggesting he had wooed Finnish President Tarja Halonen to ensure her backing for Italy to host the European Food Safety Authority.

“I had to use all my playboy tactics, even if they have not been used for some time,” he said, prompting Helsinki to call in the Italian ambassador to explain the comments.