Berlusconi stirs controversy with anti-Islam remarks

ROME, Sept 27 (AFP) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faced a storm of controversy Thursday after some undiplomatic remarks suggesting that Christianity was superior to Islam.

The political opposition and the press laid into the conservative leader for remarks which were, at the very least, ill-judged at a time when the West was trying to rally the Muslim world to join its fight against terrorism.

Even Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, leading an EU mission to the Middle East, on Thursday denounced Berlusconi's reported remarks as "not acceptable" and "not in line with European decisions and European values."

Briefing Italian journalists in Berlin on Wednesday, Berlusconi said the West "should be confident of the superiority of our civilization" and he urged Europe to "reconstitute itself on the basis of its Christian roots."

"Our civilisation is superior to Islam," was the clear message from the Italian leader, according to journalists who attended the briefing.

Critics of Berlusconi suggested he had let himself get carried away as he emerged from top-level talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on cooperation against terrorism, and with a visit upcoming to the United States.

"Inaccurate and particularly ill-timed remarks," said Piero Fassino, a top official of the former communist Party of the Democrats of the Left.

"We are in a delicate phase in which a joint effort against terrorism is essential, and such comments do not help," he added.

Fassino's rival for the party leadership, Giovanni Berlinguer, said flatly: "Silvio Berlusconi uses words and arguments that no statesman worthy of his position has used in recent times."

Francesco Rutelli, head of the center-left Daisy coalition, branded his remarks as "absurd and ill-timed."

The Italian journalists also quoted Berlusconi as saying that, given its superiority, the West "is bound to occidentalize and conquer new people."

"It has done it with the Communist world and part of the Islamic world, but unfortunately, a part of the Islamic world is 1,400 years behind."

Western civilization, he said, "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."

"This respect certainly does not exist in Islamic countries," Berlusconi added.

Italian newspapers were virulent in their criticism, with La Repubblica saying his remarks carried "a tinge of fundamentalism and a hint of crusade which are extremely dangerous in the current difficult situation."

"In this war (against terrorism), while weapons have not yet spoken, words carry a heavy weight," the paper said.

La Stampa warned that such language could stir up extremists and "play into the hands of all the bin Ladens who want to encourage a clash of civilizations."

Il Manifesto said it was concerned at the presence of a home-grown taliban-type extremist in the prime minister's office.

"If we allow them to, our taliban can become more dangerous than those responsible for the massacres in New York and Washington," the paper said.

The daily Corriere della Sera, suggesting Berlusconi was guilty of cultural snobbery, said it "wondered about the political advisability of such remarks in the midst of a difficult crisis."

Perhaps, the paper suggested, the problem lay in the absence alongside Berlusconi of Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero, a veteran figure on the international stage.

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