LIBYA IS the biggest provider of crude oil to Italy by far and its sovereign wealth fund may yet prop up some large Italian companies, but Silvio Berlusconi is discovering – like Gordon Brown – that dealing with Muammar Gadafy can be a double-edged sword.
When he flies to Tripoli on Sunday, the Italian prime minister will be the first western head of government to greet the Libyan leader since the homecoming of the convicted Lockerbie bomber.
But first, this evening, Mr Berlusconi has a related but potentially more important meeting closer to home, with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state.
The dinner, after a festival bestowing absolution of sins, was intended be a reconciliation with the Catholic Church in the wake of harsh attacks by senior clerics on the 72-year-old tycoon’s personal life, involving relationships with prostitutes and a teenager.
But a political row has thrust immigration and human rights to the fore after the Vatican condemned a deal with Libya involving Italy’s forced return of African refugees.
That Mr Berlusconi has met Col Gadafy more often than the number two at the Vatican in the past year is a measure of the importance of Libya’s oil and its estimated €70 billion sovereign wealth fund.
Analysts also suggest the right-wing and resurgent Northern League in Mr Berlusconi’s coalition is exploiting his weakness over personal scandals to push for a tough line on immigration. The party’s newspaper responded to the Vatican’s criticism over refugees by suggesting to the alarm of the church that the 1929 concordat with the state be reviewed.
The harsh exchanges were provoked by the arrival on Italian shores of five Eritreans on the brink of death in an inflatable dinghy, who recounted how 73 others had perished at sea and were thrown overboard, including women who had delivered still-born children. They also said some 10 vessels had ignored their plight.
Libya has agreed to take back boat people intercepted at sea. The UN estimates that, under a deal finalised with Libya in May, Italy has forcibly returned up to 1,000 Africans intercepted in international waters and not screened for refugee status as the UN says they should be. Many have fled conflicts in the Horn of Africa.
The Italian government says its policy saves lives. Aid agencies dispute this, arguing that desperate people will take greater risks to reach Italian waters where they are safe from immediate expulsion. Aid workers also believe a new law criminalising illegal immigration and those who help such migrants is deterring skippers of fishing boats and other vessels from rescuing those in distress.
Oil and business ties are expected to top the agenda when the leaders meet to celebrate the accord they forged last year, in which Italy said it would pay €3.5 billion over 25 years as reparations for its colonial rule – from 1911 to 1943.
In return, Libya made the deal on boat people and is giving Italian companies priority in infrastructure projects, such as Finmeccanica’s aerospace venture with a Libyan fund and its award last month of a €541 million railway signalling contract. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)