Clinton Opens Europe Trip, Meets Pontiff : Italy: At the outset of D-day commemorations, President and Pope display fundamental differences on population control. Meetings with other leaders scheduled.

President Clinton launched an eight-day European voyage of nostalgia and diplomacy on Thursday with a celebration of the United States’ “towering friendship” with Italy and a search for common ground with the Pope on population control.

Clinton, in a late-afternoon address to the people of Rome at the city’s historical heart on Capitoline Hill, declared that the United States and Italy share a bond of blood and spirit forged in the 50 years since the end of World War II.

“America and Italy are more than mere partners,” Clinton said, standing in the Michelangelo-designed plaza where his political idol, John F. Kennedy, spoke to the citizens of Rome 31 years ago. “We are now--and forever will be-- Alleati, amici, una famiglia “ (Allies, friends, family).

Clinton’s European trip is chiefly dedicated to commemorating the liberation of Europe from Nazism and fascism and the 50th anniversary of the D-day landings of June 6, 1944.

But the President is combining ceremonies of remembrance with substantive talks with Italian, British and French leaders on current issues, from North Korea’s nuclear ambitions to the civil war in the former Yugoslav federation to the surge of ultranationalist politics in Europe.

He also used the occasion to conduct a private, 40-minute meeting with Pope John Paul II, their second encounter in less than a year. The pontiff, growing even more outspoken with the years, did not pull his punches on abortion with the young American President.

The secular and spiritual leaders made little effort to mask their fundamental dispute over abortion while seeking shared language on the central role of the family in society.

Clinton acknowledged “genuine disagreements” with the Pope on contraception and efforts to slow population growth in the developing world.

But the President said he reassured John Paul II that, despite his and his wife’s liberal views on abortion rights, his Administration does not endorse abortion as a means of contraception or population control.

The White House and the Vatican were also far apart on spin control. While Clinton said he and the Pope spent the bulk of their time discussing problems in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, the Vatican, in a statement, said that “the most important part of the meeting” was dedicated to the subject of the “defense and promotion of life”--the Roman Catholic Church’s code words for its unwavering opposition to abortion.

“In this regard,” the Vatican statement said, “the Holy Father made an appeal to the responsibility of a great nation such as America, whose origin and historical development has always promoted ethical values that are basic to every culture.”

The Pope also upbraided Clinton on abortion at their first meeting, in Denver in August.

After seeing the Pope and viewing the newly restored frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, Clinton met with American seminarians at the Vatican.

He told the seminarians that seeing the Pope was an “awe-inspiring experience” and praised their commitment to a life of faith and self-discipline.

Clinton told the earnest theologians: “In all secular societies, it is recognized that very few people have the capacity to make a commitment of that depth and constancy. And yet, all of us know that, ultimately, the meaning of our lives depend upon the constant effort to achieve a level of integrity between what we feel and what we think and what we do.”

After Clinton’s two-hour visit to the Holy See, the President and the new Italian prime minister, billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, met for the first time.

The Italian leader reaffirmed his government’s commitment to political and economic reform, despite the presence of five neo-fascist ministers in his 25-member Cabinet.

Clinton said he would judge Berlusconi’s conservative new government on its record and said he was confident that Italy will continue to hew to its democratic traditions. But he expressed concern about the appeal and spread of totalitarian sentiment, not just in Italy but throughout the world.

“No country is immune to people who run making extremist statements trying to divide people, trying to, in effect, play on both the economic frustrations and the social and moral frustration that people feel in all countries where there is both economic stagnation and social disintegration,” Clinton said in a news conference with Berlusconi at the Palazzo Chigi, seat of the Italian government.

“People everywhere yearn for a certain sense of order and discipline and hopefulness about the daily conditions of life,” Clinton added. “And when those things are under stress, every political system will be vulnerable to people who try to play on fears and to divide people.”

The President said that he was reassured by Berlusconi’s promise that his government is unequivocally committed to democracy “from top to bottom.”

For his part, the media-magnate-turned-politician asserted that his right-wing government will not be polluted by fascism in any form and denied that Italians yearn for a return to its brown-shirted past under dictator Benito Mussolini.

“I can tell you how my government stands, truly,” Berlusconi said. “In Italy, there is no such thing as nostalgia for a period that we consider to be completely buried in the past and having been condemned by history.”

A senior American official said Berlusconi had told Clinton that Italy under his government could be “your closest partner in Europe.”

The new prime minister’s assertion struck many as ironic because Berlusconi’s economic platform is much closer to those of President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher than to Clinton’s.

The aide said the President had raised concerns about piracy of U.S. software and entertainment products, a widespread practice in Italy.

Berlusconi responded that he is well aware of the problem, having been a major consumer of U.S. entertainment as a media executive.

Clinton began his official day with a visit to Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, whose post is largely ceremonial.

Today, Clinton visits the American cemetery at Nettuno, near the site of the disastrous Anzio landing of January, 1944, where thousands died after being hemmed in on the beach for almost four months.

He will pay homage to the war dead and speak about the struggle to extend the hard-won freedom of Western Europe to the struggling nations of the former Soviet Union.