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Giorgia Meloni had dinner with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago golf club on Saturday, as the Italian prime minister seeks to strengthen ties with the US president-elect ahead of his swearing in.
The Italian leader’s unannounced trip comes days before outgoing US President Joe Biden is due to visit Rome and the Vatican for what will be his last overseas trip before relinquishing office.
“This is very exciting — I’m here with a fantastic woman — the prime minister of Italy,” Trump told the audience at Mar-a-Lago. “She has really taken Europe by storm, and everyone else, and we’re just having dinner tonight.”
Meloni made no public comments, nor has her office made any statements about her trip.
She was an ardent admirer of Trump during his first term — when she was still a fringe opposition figure — and has more recently forged a close friendship with Trump adviser Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.
Also present at Mar-a-Lago was Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, who called Meloni a “great ally, a strong leader”.
Members of Meloni’s rightwing Brothers of Italy party have hoped that the two leaders’ ideological affinity will help her emerge as one of Trump’s key European interlocutors. The president-elect has expressed enthusiasm for the Italian leader, who he also met last month in Paris during the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral.
Meloni is one of a handful of foreign leaders to have trekked to Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump after his re-election and before his inauguration on January 20. Rightwing Trump allies Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Argentina’s Javier Milei have both made visits. Canada’s premier Justin Trudeau also made an emergency visit after Trump threatened to slap Canada with 25 per cent import tariffs.
Meloni’s trip came as she faced her toughest diplomatic challenge since taking office amid domestic political outcry over the arrest in Iran of Italian journalist Cecilia Sala.
Sala, who was in Iran on a valid journalist visa, was detained just days after Italy arrested an Iranian engineer and businessman wanted in the US for allegedly exporting drone technology used to kill three American soldiers in Jordan a year ago.
The Italian journalist told her family in a rare call home that she was being held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison, sleeping on the floor, with a light on at all hours.
Iran’s official state news agency, IRNA, has reported that Sala was arrested for “violating the laws of the Islamic Republic”, without giving any further details.
However, the Iranian embassy in Rome has explicitly linked Sala’s detention to Italy’s Dec 16 arrest of Mohammad Abedini, an engineer, whose accelerated release has been demanded by Tehran.
Abedini, now being held in jail in Milan, is sought by the US to stand trial on various criminal charges for allegedly “illegally exporting sophisticated electronic components” from the US to Iran, according to the US Department of Justice.
Tehran has warned Rome of damage to bilateral ties if its citizen is extradited to the US. Abedini is due to appear in court in Italy on January 15, where his lawyer will plead for him to be taken out of jail and put under house arrest.
The US justice department has warned Rome against such a step, citing past precedents under which suspects sought by the US for criminal trial have managed to escape from Italian house arrest.
The Sala case is not the only issue likely to test Rome’s relationship with Washington, once Trump returns to the White House later this month.
Businesses fear that Italy’s economy will suffer a heavy blow if Trump follows through on his promise to impose heavy tariffs on all imports. Rome is also far short of its Nato commitment to spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence — a big focus for Trump, who wants Europe to pay more of its own security expenses.
Additional reporting by Giuliana Ricozzi in Rome
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