ROME - Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi denied Thursday that his allies had forced him to revise his plans to withdraw Italian troops from Iraq, saying the press had misinterpreted his comments.
"I have no reason to correct myself," the prime minister said, a day after he appeared to soften a previous statement that he would begin withdrawing troops from Iraq in September, following a telephone conversation with US President George W. Bush.
"It's been a completely invented story, the result of disinformation," he told reporters while campaigning in northern Italy for next month's regional elections.
"In what I said there is no possibility of seeing a U-turn, a change, something which conflicted with what I have always told the allies," he said.
Berlusconi went from announcing he would begin withdrawing troops from Iraq in September in a television interview Tuesday night to saying a day later -- after a phone call from Bush -- that he "hopes" he will be able to withdraw troops.
Bush and British Prime Minister Blair Wednesday reacted to Berlusconi's announcement by saying that no troop withdrawal from Iraq has been ordered and that the Italian leader would not act unilaterally.
"Ours are not occupation troops, they are training the Iraqi security forces," said Berlusconi.
"When Iraq, with its democratically elected government and parliament, will have the ability to defend itself on its own, we will progressively reduce our presence. That this can begin at the end of the summer is something linked to the training programme."
The prime minister said it was obvious "the hypothesis of reducing the multinational force, and therefore the Italian contingent, can only occur in the closest agreement with the Iraqi government and the allies."
"Our positions correspond perfectly to those of our main allies with whom we are involved in Iraq."
03/17/2005 15:54 GMT