(3 Jun 2004) SHOTLIST
1. Palazzo Chigi government palace
2. Flags
3. Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister, entering the press conference
4. SOUNDBITE: (Italian) Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister:
"The US president will be in Europe in order to celebrate the glorious, sad and crucial pages of our history. He will be in Rome tomorrow and then in Normandy to celebrate D-Day, and after that in Paris. Many parties in our political scene have used this visit to demonstrate their hostility toward the US."
5. Photographers
6. SOUNDBITE: (Italian) Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister:
"I’m not worried by freedom of speech and by the dissent which is the essence of democracy. Yet I’m worried about the likely violence, that absurd violence we have already seen at work too many times. I’m worried about the belief slipped into youngsters who think that by setting a flag on fire or
crashing a shop window or worse it could be possible to strengthen their own ideas. It is true the opposite."
7. Press room
8. Silvio Berlusocni, Italian prime minister (Italian):
"The last news we have doesn’t leave us calm regarding the demonstrations are going to take place tomorrow."
9. Palazzo Chigi
10. Pantheon Square
11. Tourist holding his baby, with peace flag on the background
12. SOUNDBITE: (English) Manuele Messineo, of the anti-war group Roma Citta’ Aperta alla Pace:
"OK, we are here for a "die-in." That is a non-violent action and we will play being dead on the ground. Suddenly we will go down and we will
try to represent what is happening in Iraq. People dying that are not soldiers, that are people in the streets in squares like this."
13. Die-in protester while being covered with a black plastic veil
14. Protester shouting the names of some civil victims of the war in Iraq
15. Die-in protesters laying down on Pantheon Square as if they were dead
STORYLINE:
Italians haven’t forgotten the American soldiers who fought in this peninsula 60 years ago to expel the Nazis.
But fresher still is bitterness over the Iraq war, with massive protests planned for Friday’s visit of U-S President George W. Bush.
Bush, visiting Rome to mark the 60th anniversary of its liberation by the Allies, will get a taste of the mixed emotions here.
In private meetings, he will be embraced by his strong ally, Premier Silvio Berlusconi; on the streets, thousands of furious demonstrators will gather.
Most Italians opposed the Iraq war.
Berlusconi, however, sent 3,000 troops to help rebuild Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s ouster.
The premier said on Thursday that he was worried about the possibility of violence and appealed to his fellow countrymen not to forget their debt to America.
Ties between America and Italy are long and strong.
Rome was liberated from Nazi occupation on June 4, 1944, after an appalling period that included deportations of Jews to death camps and massacres of civilians.
Centre-left opposition leaders, who have opposed Berlusconi’s support for Bush and for the Iraq war, are trying to make clear they don’t hate Americans.
A group of them paid tribute Thursday at the American cemetery in Nettuno, outside Rome, where many U.S. war casualties were buried.
For some Italians, it’s a question of whether they focus on the past or on the present.
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