PARIS: French diplomats, indeed head of state Jacques Chirac, are still hoping they can quietly defuse the issue, but France’s relations with Italy have recently taken another turn for the worse, a situation that Paris hopes to settle before Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi takes over the (revolving) presidency of the European Union on July 1.

At stake are not only Franco-Italian relations, but also — and more importantly, say French authorities — the independence of the EU’s foreign policy, especially at a time when the EU prepares to give itself its own full-fledged foreign minister, in an international context where the United States has lost no time in asserting itself notably with regard to the Middle East and Israel.

Franco-Italian relations have never been easy under the presidency of Mr Berlusconi, indeed two years ago when then Socialist culture minister Catherine Tasca said she would refuse to shake the hand of the Italian prime minister, considered by French intellectuals as an enemy of the freedom of expression — and already much too beholden to the United States — Mr Berlusconi said he felt it necessary to hire a French public relations agency to attempt to “restore” his good image among the French.

The most recent flare-up concerns Mr Berlusconi’s visit to Israel earlier this spring, at which time he refused to heed the EU’s policy that its representatives insist on meeting with Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat, even if that means — as in the recent case of Romano Prodi and French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin — that the EU envoys don’t get to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Mr Berlusconi said that he would have nothing to do with President Arafat — and this in spite of the discreet telephone prodding undertaken in days preceding the visit by President Chirac — and when he did visit Israel, it was to shake hands with Sharon, and this during a well-publicized ceremony rebroadcast around the world by the Israeli authorities bent on portraying that Berlusconi was their man, that for once a European official had seemingly come over to their way of thinking.

When EU and French authorities criticized the gesture, saying it went against the EU policy that their representatives in the region meet with Mr Arafat as well as with Israeli authorities, Mr Berlusconi shot back that he’d not gone to Tel Aviv

on behalf of the EU, but “at the request of George W. Bush,” who apparently was sending him on a special mission.

What particularly irked the French was not so much the unexpected rebuff by the turbulent Italian prime minister, but the unusually brutal remark shot back at French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, according to which “the French have lost another opportunity to shut up.”

With regard to Mr Berlusconi, France is particularly concerned that what may appear to have begun as a tempest in a teapot could very well flare up not only into an open quarrel between two of the founding members of the European Union, but also irremediably influence the future independence of the EU’s foreign policy.

And this notably with regard to the Middle East, where the European Union remains one of the few remaining sources of support for a balanced solution to a long-lasting dispute.