The ongoing EU dispute about the inclusion of Mr Jorg Haider's far-right Freedom Party in the new Austrian government yesterday looked as if it might prove a potential embarrassment for Italian centre-right opposition leader Mr Silvio Berlusconi.
Although Mr Berlusconi was quick to warn against "the risk of xenophobia and anti-Semitism" stemming from the Freedom Party's inclusion in the Austrian government, centre-left rivals pointed to alleged ideological affinities between the Freedom Party and Italy's federalist Northern League, due to stand on the same centre-right platform as Mr Berlusconi's "Forza Italia" party in regional elections in April.
The Northern League's semi-official newspaper Padania last weekend carried an editorial entitled "Haider and the League, Elective Affinities", which expressed sympathy for Mr Haider's policies, while Northern League spokesman Mr Mario Borghezio, was only one of several party members to express support for Mr Haider.
"We are solidly behind Haider and share his political programme if not his ideology," said Mr Borghezio.
Mr Walter Veltroni, leader of Democratic Left, the largest party in the D'Alema government coalition, called on Mr Berlusconi to "be consistent" and break his alliance with the League which "looks to Haider as some sort of guiding light".
The Italian Prime Minister, Mr Massimo D'Alema, also criticised the Bossi-Berlusconi electoral alliance, saying: "Haider's position is pushing Austria out of the European Union, just as Bossi's sympathies for Haider . . . would push us out of the Union."
The Northern League leader, Senator Umberto Bossi, vainly tried to play down the accusations of Haider-sympathising and said: "I don't know Haider well enough to form a judgment but when I met him, he seemed a calm sort of fellow. I tell you one thing though, I am certainly no fascist nor Nazi either."
Mr Bossi's alleged sympathies for Mr Haider, in particular in relation to the Austrian leader's desire to virtually freeze immigration, are ironically in sharp contrast with the policies of post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale (AN), another senior centre-right coalition partner.
The AN leader, Mr Gianfranco Fini, said yesterday that his party, which takes its roots from the political heritage of "Il Duce", Benito Mussolini, "shared nothing" with Mr Haider.
"For example, we are opposed to illegal immigration but we are in favour of the full integration of immigrants who arrive and live legally in Italy," Mr Fini said.
Mr Fini's distancing of himself from Mr Haider follows on a similar stance taken re extreme right-wing French leader Mr JeanMarie Le Pen.
In recent years, Mr Fini has tried hard to distance his party from its fascist past by a series of significant symbolic gestures, including a visit last February to the Auschwitz concentration camp and the denunciation both of anti-Semitism and of Mussolini's infamous 1938 racial laws.