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In a letter published on Sunday’s edition of Il Corriere Della Sera, Silvio Berlusconi said that faced with a complex and dramatic situation such as that which has been determined in Syria, Italy would need as soon as possible a government in the fullness of its powers: not any government, with any parliamentary majority, but an authoritative government internationally and internationally, an interlocutor recognised and able to make himself heard of the major powers .
Hd said that it is not a matter of siding on one side or the other, but of reasoning and acting on a possible solution to avoid the further aggravation of the situation.
He said that Italy is an essential partner of Europe and the West, all within the framework of the Atlantic Alliance. This position, which has lasted for seventy years and is based on deep shared values, naturally entails for us solidarity obligations to which we have never failed. At the same time, just our loyal and unquestioned friendship, first of all, towards the United States would put Italy – if we did not find ourselves in the current condition of paralysis – able to play a role and give suggestions that our allies would have duty and interest to listen.
He said that “Syria is the demonstration of the fact that we must not let ourselves go to summary and hasty judgments: for example, not all Assad’s enemies are friends of the West and of the liberties, and indeed the Syrian dictator is known, with certain deplorable methods , a degree of secularism of the State and respect for religious minorities infrequent in the Middle East. This is why we can not make simplifications: the Russian presence in Syria, for example, however we judge it, has brought back a vast degree of stability and pacification in a country that threatened to implode, while – regardless of good intentions – the wars for power of attorney, and support for the rebel factions with the supply of armaments, have contributed to the strengthening of ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Al Qaeda galaxy.”
He argues that Russia’s direct intervention prevented Syria from repeating what happened in Libya with Gaddafi: the dramatic errors of the West on that occasion produced a catastrophe of which the Libyans still pay the consequences, sunk into a bloody chaos , but also we Italians, victims of the dramatic recovery of illegal immigration that our government had managed to block thanks to agreements with Gaddafi. As such his view is that Russia needs to be seen as a partner rather than an enemy in this regard.
