The Italian Prime Minister, Mr Romano Prodi, said yesterday he found it difficult to believe a report that the Dutch government was opposed to Italy joining the launch of Europe's planned single currency in 1999.
"It seems to me to be affirmations that are difficult to believe," Mr Prodi told reporters in his native Bologna.
Mr Prodi was responding to a report in the magazine Der Spiegel that the Dutch were ready to insist Italy should not be invited to participate in European economic and monetary union (EMU), even at the cost of not joining the currency themselves.
The magazine said the German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, and the French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, had asked Luxembourg's Prime Minister, Mr Jean-Claude Juncker, to mediate to "solve the row", Der Spiegel said.
"It was just a few hundred metres from here that Dutch prime minister Wim Kok praised Italy and spoke about a framework and horizon where Italy and the Netherlands were united in the future European currency," Mr Prodi said.
He was referring to a visit Mr Kok made to Bologna late last year.
Mr Prodi said the "only reflection" he could offer about the report was that the Netherlands was due to hold elections in May, the same month as the decision about which countries would be in the first wave of the single currency.