The festival, which will last three days, spent in the fabulous residence - chair legs and snouts are gold - on the bank of Valdai lake in the woods south of St. Petersburg. Not even a visit Real nice Rania of Jordan in Rome Sivle Berlusconi managed to convince him to change his program. The Italian prime minister is on Tuesday with his counterpart and friend Vladimir Putin in Russia.
This is a visit secret and very private, "in which they drink vodka and talk about politics, business and other things. In theory, the two heads of government meet in the residence in the Valdai lake to celebrate 57 years of Russian Prime Minister (even if he has made on October 7). M the central theme of the energy, and more in the pipeline cocnreto South Sream, the joint venture formed by the Russian Gazprom and Italy's Eni oil. An alliance that irritates and worries the United States Brussels.
Yesterday the opposition to the Berlusconi government has described the visit as "unworthy of a democratic country." "In what country in the world-wonders Francesco Rutelli - it can happen that a Prime Minister undertakes a secret trip to see the leader of one of the most important?". The former Communist Massimo D'Alema added ironically: "Berlusconi traveled to Russia more than the old leaders of the PCI."
The certainty is that the friendship between Putin and Berlusconi is solid. Representatives of the two European countries where the gangs are more powerful than agreed in 2003, during a visit by Putin at Villa Certosa, that Eni would be associated with Gazprom to develop the South Stream project, a new gas pipeline that will from the Russian Black Sea to Bulgaria.
With Veronica Lario, including spaghetti and famous songs of John Denver, Berlusconi and Putin agreed in 2017 to 2017 to extend the sale of gas (3000 million cubic meters of natural gas) and decided that this would come in Italy through a third company.
The solution gave an old friend of Berlusconi, Bruno Mentasti Granelli, former partner and head of President Tele + San Pellegrino mineral water. After selling the water company Mentasti created by Central Energy Italy and became the confidant of Berlusconi and Gazprom. As published in Il Sole 24 Ore, Energy Central is actually controlled "by Russian authorities, many of them linked to Gazprom."
South Stream will split into two branches, one will arrive in Brindisi (Puglia) through Greece and the channel of Otranto, with a detour to Albania, the other will pass through Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary and will be up to Vienna. They leave out Romania, which is now trying desperately to join the project.
The U.S. fears about South Stream are enormous. In his first interview to an Italian media convex, the new U.S. ambassador in Rome, David Thorne, showed his concern about "excessive energy dependence" Italian.
Gazprom itself has calculated that when the two pipelines are in operation, Europe's energy dependence on Russia will surpass 33%.
The expert Marshall Goldman of Harvard University warned that "all European states that procurement of gas from Russian pipelines will be at the mercy of the will of the Kremlin."
Washington fears that then starts to strangle the South Stream gas pipeline Nabucco, which has its support which I know are added in June, Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania, Hungary and Austria in the presence of European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso. Nabucco would carry Russian gas to Europe through the Azerbaiyan.
The third contention is North Stream project, which must unite Russia with Germany via the Baltic and that could begin to bring gas from the end 2011, if they cooperate coastal countries. Sweden for the moment refused to surrender its territorial waters. How
informed a spokesman for the Russian government, the former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, President of the North Stream, not to the party of Putin and Berlusconi, as he published the newspaper of the family of Italian Prime Minister, the Journal. In 2007, when he was opposition leader, Berlusconi twice visited the residence of Putin and Schroeder who treated them both with Chirac, former French president. In
policy Berlusconi to Russia does not seem to have much opinion of his foreign minister, Franco Frattini. The Financial Times pointed out that Italy knew the concern of Member United for the South Stream project last week, during the visit of Minister of Economic Development, Claudio Scajola, in Washington. Frattini denied saying that Italy is diversifying its imports, as shown lafirma on Monday in Milan, the agreement between the oil company Eni and Turkish Calik to plant another gas pipeline from the Black Sea to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. Igor Sechin, Russian deputy, said that Russia is prepared to inject gas in this pipeline.
The controversy of intelligence
Il Corriere della Sera on October 6 said that Berlusconi, "convinced that there was an international conspiracy against him, wants to know who directs the wire," and asked for help from the secret services of a friendly power, but not an ally.
stated that the news, accused of scandal and constitutional crisis in the open with the other branches of government, Berlusconi had used to know a friend Vladimir Putin, a former member of the KGB.
For 24 hours, Berlusconi has not refuted this information to the leading Italian daily, until the end was forced to do so when the opposition threatened to question him in parliament. But just a week after the period of the Berlusconi family, "the newspaper brought to light an old secret service files of the Czechoslovak and accused of spying Augias Corrado, a veteran Communist collaborator and now de" La Repubblica ". As noted by Joseph
d? surplus in this newspaper, some men of confidence in Berlusconi revealed hours before the news of the Courier that the real objective of Putin Berlusconi aid was given out over the communist past of the head of state Giorgio Napolitano
Miguel Mora, "El Pais" of October 21, 2008
translated by Francesco Palmeri
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