Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi declined to call for the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, saying the U.S. and Europe had considered him a “reference point” and “the wisest man” in the Middle East.
Asked directly if the time had come for Mubarak to step aside, Berlusconi said he hoped for “continuity in the government.” Western leaders want a “more democratic system without ruptures with a president like Mubarak that all the Western hemisphere, including the U.S., had considered the wisest man and a reference point in all of the Middle East,” Berlusconi said on arriving at a meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels today.