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Margherita Boniver, an Italian Member of Parliament and longtime foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, chastised the "French radical-chic" efforts to block extradition. "The fact that Carla Bruni [helped] Petrella avoid extradition to Italy is something grave," adding there appeared to be "a sort of convergence" with the Battisti case. "It's all unprecedented," Boniver told reporters...
...British tabloids gave rave reviews for her good manners at Buckingham Palace. She charmed David Letterman and swung by the Today show to sing a love ballad penned for her husband, "Le President." Most importantly, Carla Bruni, a.k.a. Madame Nicolas Sarkozy, has won over the skeptical French public with a well-calibrated Gallic mix of dynamism and demure. Still, the First Lady of France has a major public relations problem on her hands, in the last place you might have guessed: her native Italy...
...after Brazil blocked the extradition to Italy of leftist Cesare Battisti, convicted of four murders in the 1980s. Battisti had also long taken refuge in France, where he became a successful author of mystery novels, and a cause celebre among Parisian leftist intellectuals. He was arrested in 2007 by French police, but managed to flee to Brazil. Italian media reports last week claimed that during the French First Couple's recent trip to Rio de Janeiro, Bruni had lobbied Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to block the extradition...
...Sunday, making her first appearance on Italian TV since marrying Sarkozy, Bruni vigorously denied any involvement in the Battisti case, calling reports that she'd brought the case up with Lula "slanderous." Still, French novelist Fred Vargas, who has been leading the campaign in support of Battisti and has managed to speak to top Brazilian officials, has said that she'd lobbied Bruni directly about the case. (See pictures of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni celebrating Bastille...
...public swipe at the Italian Prime Minister in November. At that time, Berlusconi had cracked an offensive joke just after Barack Obama's election victory, saying the incoming American President was "young, handsome and well-tanned." Bruni told one reporter the following day that she was "glad to be French." (See Berluscon's worst gaffes...