“Southern Front? A Personal Offence” –

“I consider it almost a personal affront.” Defense Minister Guido Crosetto does not hide it in an interview with La Stampa when commenting on the decision of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to entrust Spain with the new role of envoy for the Southern Front. There is “a deep disappointment” to deal with, he says, underlining that to Stoltenberg “I wrote a very harsh message. It made me furious and there will be consequences on the level of personal relations. His was the betrayal of a principle. It was Italy that fought to introduce the role of envoy for the Southern Front. And at the Washington summit 32 leaders agreed with us. In twenty years, the two and a half billion people in Africa will be the main problem of the Atlantic Alliance because they will become an army in the hands of those countries that have already begun to occupy the continent in recent years, Russia and China.”

“Stoltenberg did not want to appoint a representative to the South. He had to put it in the resolution because Italy wanted it and so he took revenge – explains Crosetto – by giving the role to a Spaniard, a Spanish official who already does another job, in fact emptying the political objective that we pursued and approved at the NATO summit, I find it terrible behavior. He ended his 9 years at the helm of NATO in the worst way”. Italy, he clarifies, “has a problem, today, with Stoltenberg. He is the only one responsible, he chose the person for that role, based on opaque criteria and internal bureaucratic logic, without consulting with the allies, perhaps because he was guided by logics of political affiliation, failing in the first of his responsibilities, to be super partes. This is not even the only case. Lately, on his part, I have witnessed a series of promotions, new assignments, offices and responsibilities, all arriving a few months before the expiry of the mandate. It seems like the parade of the ‘nobles of the ladder’, that group of counts and marquises appointed in Italy when the Kingdom of Savoy was in its final stages. An example of the worst nepotism”.

On the fact that Fratelli d’Italia voted once morest the second term of office of Ursula Von der Leyen, Crosetto cuts short: “The discussions of these days seem to me to be unfounded. The vote for the presidency of the European Commission is being addressed as if we were talking regarding the Italian Presidency of the Council, while they are two entities with very different mechanisms”.