Italian Senate Leader Slams Qadhafi Over Deadly Riots

Italy's senate speaker launched an attack on Tuesday on Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi for stirring up deadly anti-Italian riots in Benghazi, saying that the violence had more to do with an Islamic "holy war" against the West than anger over the Danish cartoons.

"Those who point the finger at Qadhafi are right. I don't think that in Libya, like in Syria or Iran, it's possible to see a mass demonstration without someone at the top knowing about it," said Marcello Pera, a leading member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party. On February 8, Condoleezza Rice said that "Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes and the world ought to call them on it."

Pera was forced to resign on Saturday by Berlusconi, who has been eager not to squander years of careful diplomacy with the oil-and-gas rich desert state and former Italian colony, which supplies 30% of Italy's natural gas needs.