A Backlash Brews as Italy Buries Slain Agent

An Italian intelligence officer slain by U.S. troops in Iraq after he helped free a kidnapped journalist was buried Monday with full ceremonial honors as angry questions over the shooting threatened to do political harm to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a fervent ally of the Bush administration.

Thousands of Italians, some weeping and others applauding, lined the streets of the capital to watch as the flag-draped coffin of Nicola Calipari was borne to St. Mary of Angels and Martyrs Church in Rome’s Piazza della Repubblica.

“Bravo, Nicola!” people in the crowd called, hailing him as a hero.

Inside the chilly 16th century basilica, Calipari’s wife and children were accompanied by senior religious and political leaders, including Berlusconi and U.S. Ambassador Mel Sembler.

“This is a time for unity, without controversy,” an emotional Gianni Letta, a senior aide to Berlusconi who worked with Calipari in negotiating hostage releases, said in the eulogy. “Let’s leave the polemics to one side.”

But Berlusconi’s party faces tough regional elections in four weeks, and the shooting has put the prime minister in a sensitive position. While he is loath to damage his relationship with Washington, his credibility at home rests on holding the U.S. military accountable for the shooting.

Calipari, 50, was killed by a single bullet to the head when he used his body to shield the just-freed Giuliana Sgrena. Their car came under U.S. Army fire Friday night along the notoriously dangerous road to the Baghdad airport.

The U.S. military said the Italians had been speeding toward a checkpoint and had ignored warnings to stop.

Since her return to Rome on Saturday, however, Sgrena has disputed the U.S. version of events from her hospital bed. She said their car had not been speeding, her group was not near a checkpoint and they had not seen warning signals.

Recovering from shrapnel wounds to her shoulder, she did not attend Monday’s funeral.

Sgrena, 56, has worked for the Communist newspaper Il Manifesto for 17 years. She raised eyebrows when she suggested that she might have been targeted deliberately because of U.S. disapproval of Italy’s willingness to negotiate with kidnappers.

“Everyone knows the Americans are dead set against any negotiations for the release of hostages and that they will do anything to stop those who are trying to save the lives of hostages,” Sgrena told an Italian TV interviewer Sunday.

On Monday, she told the leading newspaper Corriere della Sera:

“I believe, but it’s only a hypothesis, that the happy ending to the negotiations must have been irksome. The Americans are against this type of operation. For them, war is war, human life doesn’t count for much.”

The White House on Monday said the idea that Sgrena had been intentionally targeted was “absurd.”

Italy is rumored to have paid huge ransoms for Sgrena and other Italians seized in Iraq. In the past the government has denied such payments, but Agriculture Minister Giovanni Alemanno was quoted in Corriere as saying that a ransom was “very probably” paid.

Calipari was an experienced negotiator who was assigned missions directly by Berlusconi’s office. Italy has demanded a full accounting from U.S. authorities in Rome and Washington.

“It will be a problem for the government to keep this episode quiet,” said Pietro Bognetti, 58, a lawyer who joined the crowds filling the streets from the Vittoriano monument, where Calipari lay in state Sunday, to the church where he was buried Monday.

“I came to pay my respects for a person who died in an absurd way,” Bognetti said. “He did not deserve this.”

Out of what they said was respect for the slain agent, politicians were holding most of their outcry for a special parliamentary session today, and Berlusconi is to report to legislators Wednesday.

Regional elections April 3 are seen as a forerunner to a national vote next year, and the opposition is expected to make Berlusconi’s involvement in the Iraq war a central issue.

Berlusconi sent about 3,000 troops to Iraq despite widespread popular opposition to the war. Tragic incidents such as the shooting of Calipari complicate the leader’s ability to defend the decision.

Bush, who telephoned Berlusconi hours after the shooting, promised a full investigation.

Berlusconi summoned Sembler, the U.S. ambassador, to his office Friday night, and the two held an extended meeting again Monday after the funeral. The Italian news agency ANSA reported that Sembler had given Berlusconi a preliminary reconstruction of the events leading up to the shooting that portrayed a breakdown in communications between U.S. and Italian officials.

Many Italians are skeptical, however, that the Americans will tell the full truth, or that Berlusconi can force them to.

Italians recall that a U.S. military court acquitted a Marine pilot of manslaughter after his jet sheared the cables of an Italian ski lift and killed 20 people in 1998.

“My hope is that the government knows how to obtain the truth,” said opposition leader Romano Prodi, the most likely challenger to Berlusconi in next year’s vote.

But leftist politician Giulietto Chiesa, an Italian representative to the European Parliament, said it would be “useless” to expect the U.S. to be forthright.

“Being the ones primarily responsible for everything that happens in Iraq, the Americans will not say anything that makes them uncomfortable,” he said.

Berlusconi has weathered the fallout from tragedy in Iraq before. When 19 Italian troops were killed by a suicide bomber there in November 2003, he led ceremonies to honor the men and ultimately did not pay a political price.

This time, however, even Berlusconi’s closest associates are expressing unease.

“What has happened cannot be used as an alibi to revive anti-Americanism,” Pier Ferdinando Casini, speaker of the lower house of parliament and a member of Berlusconi’s coalition, told the newspaper La Repubblica. “[But] friendship can never be servitude, and for this reason we have to ask with determination to have the truth and clarity.”

Berlusconi has already made it clear he will neither alter his policies in Iraq nor withdraw troops ahead of schedule. The extent of any political damage will probably depend on whether the U.S. is seen as whitewashing the investigation or punishing those responsible.

“The tension with the U.S. will continue,” said James Walston, professor of political science and international relations at the American University of Rome.

“Inevitably, Berlusconi will be hearing not from the leftist opposition but from his own people, and they will be saying: ‘Why? If the Americans can kill an Italian policeman like this, then we shouldn’t kowtow to them.’ ”

Maria De Cristofaro in The Times’ Rome Bureau contributed to this report.