ITALY: An Italian minister under fire for describing Germans as loud "hyper-nationalistic blondes" had offered to resign yesterday, a government source said.
"Stefano Stefani has not given his resignation to the industry minister, but directly to [Prime Minister Silvio\] Berlusconi," said the source, who asked not to be named.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had said Mr Stefani, a junior minister responsible for tourism, deserved to be fired for insults that strained German-Italian relations.German
Mr Schröder said in an interview with ARD television he did not want to intervene in Italy's domestic politics, but that Mr Stefani would have been fired within the hour if he had been in his cabinet.
"If a leading politician serves mindless prejudices against my people, then a line has to be drawn somewhere," Mr Schröder said, when asked why he had cancelled his summer holiday to Italy. "In my government, he wouldn't have survived the hour in his job." - (Reuters)