Italian leader says he warned U.S. on war

ROME — For years, he has been one of President Bush's most loyal supporters in Europe, a leader who steadfastly backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq and one of the few on the continent to send troops to help.

So it came as something of a surprise this weekend when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi revealed his reservations about the war — on the eve of a visit to Washington, D.C., no less.

"I tried repeatedly to convince the American president not to go to war," Berlusconi told an interviewer with the La7 television channel. "I was never convinced that war was the best system to achieve democracy in a country that had to emerge from a bloody dictatorship. I maintained that military action should be avoided."

The interview will be broadcast Monday, the day the prime minister arrives at the White House, and excerpts were reported Saturday by Italian news agencies.

Facing a tough re-election early next year, Berlusconi might be attempting to distance himself from Bush, who lately has been besieged by an onslaught of crises that have eroded public support. Berlusconi, too, has seen his support sag, in part because of the unpopular war in Iraq as well as worsening economic malaise.

Berlusconi's comments on Iraq also come at a time of speculation that his government had a hand in forging documents that purported to show that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Niger for use in nuclear weapons. The Bush administration cited that claim in building the case for going to war.

The Italian government has denied that it or its intelligence services were involved in producing and passing to Washington the fake dossier, which was delivered in 2002 to the U.S. Embassy in Rome by a reporter working for a Berlusconi-owned magazine.