It’s About Blackmail, Not National Security

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It’s About Blackmail, Not National Security

Italy center left rejects Berlusconi "blackmail"

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s center left will not accept any “blackmail” from its center-right coalition partner, its leader said on Monday, after Silvio Berlusconi’s party threatened to bring down the government if he is ejected from parliament.

Reuters: Top News

Italy center left rejects Berlusconi "blackmail"

Italy center left rejects Berlusconi "blackmail"

Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi looks on during a news conference at Chigi Palace in Rome August 4, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Tony Gentile

ROME | Mon Aug 26, 2013 5:41am EDT

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s center left will not accept any “blackmail” from its center-right coalition partner, its leader said on Monday, after Silvio Berlusconi’s party threatened to bring down the government if he is ejected from parliament.

Relations between Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PDL) party and Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s Democratic Party (PD) are at breaking point ahead of a Senate vote due by October on whether to expel the media mogul over his tax fraud conviction.

Following a party summit over the weekend at Berlusconi’s Milan villa, members of the PDL said his removal from parliament was “unthinkable” and openly threatened to bring down the government if their PD coalition partners vote to evict him.

“The PD rejects any blackmail or ultimatum from the PDL,” PD secretary Guglielmo Epifani told the daily newspaper la Repubblica on Monday, reaffirming that his party would vote in favor of Berlusconi’s removal from parliament.

“Berlusconi needs to take note of what led to his conviction, and he has to explain why he would bring down the government at a time of crisis.”

He warned that if the government collapsed just as the euro zone’s third-largest economy was showing the first signs of recovery after a two-year recession, there would be “enormous costs” for society and renewed tremors in financial markets.

Letta is trying to push on with reforms to spur growth and fight record levels of unemployment despite deep divisions in his coalition, which was cobbled together after inconclusive elections in February.

Bond markets have calmed and Italian borrowing costs have declined well below levels that triggered concern during the height of euro zone turmoil in 2011, when Berlusconi resigned as premier to make way for a technocrat government.

However, on Monday the difference in yield between Italian 10-year bonds and their German counterparts widened slightly as investors worried about a potential government collapse.

“It doesn’t look like the politicians will find a compromise to get out of this crisis, which puts all measures that need to be taken to spur the economy on ice,” said a Milan trader.

“There is the risk that this could hit our economic recovery at a time when the country has shown some signs of a pick-up,” he said.

Letta said on Sunday it would be “madness” to bring down his government at such a sensitive time, but said he was confident the administration could resolve its problems.

The coalition partners are also arguing over an unpopular housing tax reform which they are due to agree on Wednesday. The PDL has threatened to bring down the government if the reform is not abolished, but center-left officials say there are not enough alternative resources to scrap it completely.

The cabinet is also due to meet later on Monday to agree on measures to cut public administration spending.

(Reporting by Catherine Hornby; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

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Reuters: Top News

Italy center left rejects Berlusconi "blackmail"

Vatican Denies Gay Blackmail Rumors

The Vatican on Saturday accused the Italian media of spreading “false and damaging” reports in what it condemned as a deplorable attempt to influence cardinals who will meet in a secret conclave next month to elect a new pope.

Since Pope Benedict announced his resignation on Feb. 11, Italian newspapers have been full of rumors about conspiracies, secret reports and lobbies in the Vatican that they say pushed the pope to abdicate, including a rumor that involved a shadowy “gay lobby” within the Vatican though CNN Senior Vatican Analyst John Allen, also a correspondent with the National Catholic Reporter, cautioned that such unsourced speculation should be taken with a grain of salt.

While Allend said he doesn’t know for sure if such a network based on sexual orientation was investigated, he said “frankly, it would be a little surprising if they hadn’t” — given past scandals that have come to light.

He theorized that the Pope may have been worn down by the “cumulative impact of the various meltdowns over the last eight years,” in a piece he wrote on Friday. “It’s probably a stretch to draw a straight line between all of this and Benedict’s resignation,” he said. “For the most part, one has to take the Pope at his word: He’s stepping aside because he’s old and tired, not because of any particular crisis.”

A Vatican statement said “It is deplorable that, as we draw closer to the time of the beginning of the conclave … that there be a widespread distribution of often unverified, unverifiable or completely false news stories that cause serious damage to persons and institutions.”

The Italian reports have painted an unflattering picture of the Vatican’s central administration, known as the Curia, depicting it as being full of prelates more concerned with their careers than serving the Church or the pope.

Some Church officials, speaking privately, have said foreign cardinals coming to Rome to choose the next pope have been alarmed over reports of corruption and might be inclined to elect someone not connected with the Curia, which is predominantly Italian.

The Vatican statement said the Italian media reports were an attempt to influence the outcome of the conclave through negative public opinion much like states and kings tried to influence papal elections centuries ago.

The Pope has announced that he will step down on Feb. 28, becoming the first pontiff to abdicate in some six centuries.

The 85-year-old Benedict said his failing health no longer enabled him to run the 1.2-billion-member Roman Catholic Church as he would like.

In a separate statement, Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the reports were trying to “discredit the Church and its government” ahead of the conclave.

Italy’s Repubblica newspaper ran a series of unsourced stories this week about the alleged contents of a secret report prepared for the Pope by a commission of three cardinals who investigated the so-called Vatileaks scandal last year.

Paolo Gabriele, the Pope’s butler, was convicted of stealing personal papal documents and leaking them to the media. He was jailed and later pardoned by the Pope.

The documents alleged corruption in the Vatican and infighting over the running of its bank, which has been at the heart of a series of scandals in past decades.

On Friday the Vatican denied Italian media reports that Benedict’s decision to send a senior official to a new post in Latin America was linked to the secret report about leaked papal papers.

The Vatican said the transfer to Colombia of Monsignor Ettore Balestrero, an Italian who holds a post roughly equivalent to deputy foreign minister, was a promotion and had been decided weeks ago. Balestrero will be promoted to archbishop and made ambassador in Bogota.

Those reports said Balestrero was being sent away from the Vatican because he figured in the secret report.

On Saturday, as part of his last activities before his resignation in five days, Benedict ended a week-long Lenten spiritual retreat in the Vatican and held a farewell meeting with Italy’s president.

On Sunday he will hold his last Sunday blessing. He will hold his last general audience on Wednesday and meet with cardinals on Thursday morning before he resigns on Thursday.

He will first go to the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo south of Rome and then move to a convent inside the Vatican in April after the building is renovated.

Reuters contributed to this report.

© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Vatican Denies Gay Blackmail Rumors