A dare to put her money where her mouth is. — Ed
Miss Alessandra Mussolini, (right) 47, a Right-wing MP and former actress and model tore into France’s Italian-born first lady for failing to talk her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy into taking in Libyans and Tunisians who have been ariving at the Italian island of Lampedusa by the thousand since January.
Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy should have “protested against the shutting of French borders to illegal immigrants decided by her husband”, she is quoted as saying by the Le Figaro newspaper.
Miss Mussolini, an ally of Silvio Berlusconi, is said to have added: “Why doesn’t the first lady welcome immigrants who want to come to France into her chateaux?”
French police have rebuffed hundreds of mainly Tunisian immigrants seeking to cross the border in recent days. Many have gathered in the town of Ventimiglia, which the French press has dubbed Italy’s “Sangatte” – a reference to the Red Cross Centre in Calais which acted as a magnet to thousands of migrants hoping to reach Britain before being closed in 2002.
Last week, Franco Frattini, Italy’s foreign minister denounced France’s “absence of solidarity”, while Brussels declared France had no right to “send migrants back to Italy”.