The Bush administration was forced yesterday to issue a grovelling apology to the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, after White House officials briefed the travelling US press corps that Berlusconi was regarded as a political amateur who had used his massive media influence to gain political power. The briefing given to White House press corps was lifted, administration officials said, from the Encyclopedia of World Biography, and put in a briefing pack as though it represented the views of the administration. Berlusconi has prided himself on being Bush's natural ally in Europe. But the profile described him as "one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice ... regarded by many as a political dilettante who gained his high office only through use of his...
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