Italy's Foreign Ministry has confirmed that Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad will visit the Italian capital Rome in early June to attend a high-level conference of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on global food security, climate change and energy. It will be Ahmadinejad's first trip to Europe since taking office in 2005.
Other world leaders expected to attend the event include French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Tehran has reportedly also given the Iranian embassy to the Holy See instructions to ask for an audience with Pope Benedict XVI. As technically Iran's supreme leader is Ayatollah Khamenei and not Ahmadinejad, the Vatican may set up a meeting between Ahmadinejad and the Holy See's cardinal secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone, instead of the Pope. Ahmadinejad has also asked for a meeting with Italy's new prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, but both Berlusconi and Foreign minister Franco Frattini have ruled out meetings with the controversial Iranian president. Together with Germany, Italy is Iran's most important trading partner of all the 27 European Union countries. Trade between the two countries was worth around US$ 10 billion in 2007.
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