MEPs Simon Busuttil and David Casa (TMID, 23 October) claim that the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s alleged comments on Malta’s sixth seat in the European Parliament “were simmering in the European media”. This is a blatant untruth. Nobody in the European or world media carried the story. Nobody in the Italian media carried it ... apart from the Silvio Berlusconi owned newspaper Il Giornale.

It is a real pity that Messrs Busuttil and Casa immediately latched onto the fabricated Il Giornale story and contributed towards creating an artificial rift, which in reality never existed, between Malta and Italy. Unlike Dr Busuttil and Mr Casa, I do not rely blindly on the journalist employed by Dr Busuttil and Mr Casa’s political colleague, Silvio Berlusconi, whose only scope in life at the moment – after his defeat at the April 2006 elections – is to discredit his political adversary Romano Prodi.

In fact, I prefer getting the facts directly from the horse’s mouth, Mr Prodi himself, who confirmed – in no uncertain terms – that the Berlusconi journalist’s story was a total fabrication.

Having had direct and personal experience of both Dr Busuttil and Mr Casa’s way of going about politics (MEP elections, 2004) and of Mr Prodi’s (Italian election campaign, 2006), there cannot be the slightest shadow of doubt on my part: Romano Prodi is the man to believe.

Arnold Cassola

Swieqi