Enter the facilitator Prodi sees Italy's new role

ST PETERSBURG, Russia, July 18 (Reuters) Italy might not have America's military might or Russia's energy clout but Prime Minister Romano Prodi used the weekend's G8 summit to stake Italy's claim as a player on the world stage.

At his first meeting of the Group of Eight leaders since winning an April election, Prodi said he saw himself as a ''facilitator'' in the West Asia crisis, making phone calls to Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Iran.

''No one can be a mediator,'' Prodi told reporters at the summit in Russia. ''In these cases, the most serious term is facilitator.'' Analysts said it remained to be seen if Prodi's offer to be an ''honest broker'' between states that will not talk to each other would have an impact in the West Asia, but it showed a shift in style from Prodi's predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi.

''There's certainly a different style here,'' said Franco Pavoncello of Rome's John Cabot University. ''It's not a matter of having sway, it's a matter of being seen as a credible voice.'' After five years' government by Berlusconi, a centre-right media magnate, Prodi returned to power on a promise to shift Italy away from his predecessor's enthusiastically pro-U S stance and pull Italian troops out of Iraq before year-end.

Berlusconi styled himself as President George W Bush's most loyal ally on mainland Europe. Prodi heads a coalition that includes communists, pacifists and greens who are strongly opposed to much of U S policy.

When Bush visited Berlusconi in 2003, Rome was swamped by a massive anti-war demonstration staged by many of the people who would later vote Prodi into power.

But at the G8 summit, Prodi and Bush emerged from a face-to-face meeting smiling and chatting on first-name terms, both keen to show relations remained good.

''I've enjoyed my visit with the Prime Minister, Romano. I've known him for a long time,'' Bush said of the man he last met at a G8 summit two years ago, when Prodi was European Commission president.

''No question, when Italy and the United States work together, along with other countries, we're able to achieve important breakthroughs,'' Bush said.

FOREIGN POLICY Prodi's desire to be a facilitator in the West Asia shows a desire to nudge Italian foreign policy into more neutral territory than under Berlusconi.

''Berlusconi was on one side, there was no doubt about it and that limited the possibility of the Italian government to play any role,'' said Sergio Romano, a political commentator and a former ambassador to the Soviet Union.

''You can't really be a broker once you have chosen so clearly and explicitly as Berlusconi did. Prodi has exploited a greater degree of autonomy that Italy has at the moment.'' Prodi has received some ridicule at home for his attempts to intervene in the West Asia. A cartoon in leading newspaper Corriere della Sera depicts Prodi as a bee trying to push an angry looking elephant, representing the intractable violence in the region.

The opposition has enjoyed highlighting splits in Prodi's coalition over foreign policy.

''While Prodi tries to create this image as an international mediator, people in his government are asking him to above all be a peacemaker within his own ranks,'' said Francesco Storace of the National Alliance party. ''It really is a sad spectacle.'' Nowhere are the divisions in Prodi's Union coalition clearer than on Afghanistan, where Prodi has vowed to maintain Italian troops as part of the NATO mission.

Dissidents in his coalition have said they will vote against keeping troops there, something that could seriously affect Prodi's ability to govern in a parliament where he has only a two-seat majority in the upper house.

Reuters SHB VV1525