ROME: The extraordinary diplomatic incident which Silvio Berlusconi provoked when he likened a German MEP to a Nazi death camp guard is but the latest in a long catalogue of high-profile gaffes.

If some passed largely unnoticed outside Italy, others have caused serious offence and international incidents which, long before this week, seriously dented Berlusconi’s credibility.

The most serious blunder to date remains his declaration that Western civilization was superior to that of Islam, which he said was “firmly entrenched where it was 1,400 years ago.”

“We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and, in contrast with Muslim countries, respect for religious and political rights...”

Predictably, the comments provoked an outcry at a time when the Western powers were seeking to rally the Muslim world for support in the war against terrorism following September 11.

It took him fully six months to repair the diplomatic damage caused by that outburst.

“The problem is that Silvio Berlusconi talks as he thinks, which has made him a success with his compatriots,” explains Italian philosopher Lucio Coletti.

Umberto Bossi, Berlusconi’s coalition colleague and boss of the Northern League, said as much on Thursday.

“I’m with Silvio. That guy, the German, insulted him. What was he to do? Stay quiet? Berlusconi spoke with the voice of the people,” said Bossi, a xenophobe who recently said boats carrying illegal immigrants to Italy should be blown out of the water.

Last September, Berlusconi waded into a domestic row over lack of police resources after police were forced to use beach pedalos, or paddle boats, to recover the bodies of would-be immigrants drowned in a shipwreck off Sicily.

Asked about it by journalists, Berlusconi responded: “The pedalos are sufficient to recover the bodies. I don’t believe any of them complained.”

In another throwaway line last December, he outraged trades unions after saying Fiat workers hit by mass layoffs could find work in the black economy.

“The most keen can certainly find a second job, maybe unofficial, from which they could earn extra money for their families,” he said.

Berlusconi, now 66 and Italy’s richest man, has never lost the rapid salesman’s patter which has taken him from selling vacuum cleaners to the head of Italy’s most successful business empire, via a stint as a nightclub crooner in the 1950s.

He brought his sassy motormouth style to politics, and Italians fell in love with his go ahead can-do style, epitomized in the political party he founded in 1993, Forza Italia (Go Italy!).

But his gaffes continue to scandalize Italians sensitive to how their country is perceived abroad.

He angered the Finnish government last year when he railed at a proposal to base an EU food standards agency in Helsinki, rather than the Italian city of Parma.

“Parma is synonymous with good cuisine. The Finns don’t even know what prosciutto is.”

In a EU family photo at an informal meeting in Spain in 2002, he made a rude gesture by extending the first and fourth fingers of his hand, the Italian sign for a cuckold. He was pointing at Spain’s Foreign Minister Josep Pique, standing in front of him, and oblivious.

He surprised his Danish colleague Anders Fogh Rasmussen during a news conference in Rome last October when he referred to his own marital difficulties.

“Rasmussen is the most handsome prime minister in Europe... I think I’ll introduce him to my wife, because he’s lot better looking than Cacciari, from what they tell me...poor woman,” he quipped.

A puzzled Rasmussen looked suitably intrigued by a very public allusion to rumours of a liaison between Berlusconi’s wife Veronica and Italian philosopher and former Venice mayor Massimo Cacciari.—AFP