Italy PM to address US conference despite boycott call

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni was set to address a meeting of US conservatives Saturday despite opposition demands she cancel after firebrand Steve Bannon used an apparent Nazi salute at the event.

The prime minister, leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, was scheduled to deliver a speech via videolink to the Conservative Political Action Conference at 1815 GMT.

Media reports suggested it would go ahead despite a row over the gesture by Bannon, a former advisor to US President Donald Trump, although neither her office nor her party would confirm either way.

Opposition MPs have demanded Meloni follow the example of Jordan Bardella, president of France’s anti-immigration National Rally party, who pulled out Friday because of what he called Bannon’s “gesture alluding to Nazi ideology”.

Meloni “should have the decency to disassociate herself from this neo-fascist gathering”, Elly Schlein, leader of Italy’s centre-left Democratic Party said.

“She has not said a word for days about Trump’s insults and frontal attacks on Ukraine and the European Union,” she added in a statement Friday.

“She is unable to defend Italian and European interests because she does not want to displease the new American administration.”

Bannon briefly held out a stiffened arm with his palm down at CPAC on Thursday night as he called on the audience to “fight, fight”.

Giorgio Mule, vice-president of the Chamber of the Deputies and a member of the right-wing Forza Italia, a partner in Meloni’s coalition government, said Saturday that Bannon’s gesture was “extremely serious”.

“I’m sure Giorgia Meloni will have no difficulty in distancing herself from it,” he told Giornale Radio.

Meloni was the only EU leader to attend Trump’s inauguration in January and her allies have presented her a potential bridge between the European Union and the new US president.

But the nationalist leader, who took over in October 2022, has largely refrained from commenting on Trump’s blitz of initiatives and comments since then.

Despite her strong support for Kyiv in its war with Russia, she has notably said nothing in public about Trump’s interventions on the conflict, or his branding of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator”.

ar/cw

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