Summit takes spotlight off Berlusconi personal woes

By Philip Pullella - Analysis

ROME (Reuters) - Dogged by a messy public divorce and reports of cavorting with underage girls and female escorts, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's image has a lot riding on the outcome of the G8 summit in L'Aquila.

The results have been mixed for Berlusconi, but for the most part he seems to have won his bid to use the summit to take the spotlight off his private woes, at least for a few days.

Predictions that the hastily-planned summit would have been as much as a disaster as the earthquake that hit the area in April failed to materialise.

Before the summit, a New York Times editorial accused Italy of "inexcusably lax planning" and said Berlusconi had shown more showmanship than leadership. Britain's Guardian newspaper went as far as saying some nations wanted Italy expelled from the G8.

Berlusconi and his aides fought the foreign press -- something they have perfected to an art form -- by playing the national pride card.

He called the Guardian report, which said Washington secretly took over the event's planning, "a load of rubbish by a small newspaper."

"There are only two types of reality -- that of the common people and that which newspapers sometimes write, but that is not reality but pure fantasy," he told a news conference at the end of the summit's second day.

There were some disgruntled delegates.