Premier Giorgia Meloni on Thursday
accused French President Emmanuel Macron of election campaigning
at the G7 summit in Puglia in relation to a spat over the
failure to mention of the right to abortion in the final
declaration.
Macron, who has called parliamentary elections in France after
his party did badly in last week's European elections, said he
was sorry that the word "abortion" did not feature in the
statement and complained of "different sensibilities".
"There is no reason to cause controversy about issues that we
have long agreed on," Meloni said on the first day of the summit
at the Puglia resort of Borgo Egnazia.
"And I think it is profoundly wrong, in difficult times like
these, to use a precious forum like the G7 to campaign".
A draft of the summit statement said the G7 stood by our
commitments made in the final communiqué the last year's
Hiroshima G7, which did specifically refer to abortion.
"The controversy over the presence or absence of the word
abortion in the conclusions is a total pretext," Meloni said.
"The conclusions of Borgo Egnazia recall those of Hiroshima, in
which we already approved last year the need to ensure that
abortion is 'safe and legal'.
"This is an established fact and no one has ever asked us to
backtrack on this.
"If the conclusions do not introduce new issues, it is so as not
to be unnecessarily repetitive, simply recalling what has
already been stated at previous summits'.
The tension seemed to ease later on Thursday when Macron kissed
Meloni's hand at the dinner of the first day.
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