Buttiglione slams media over single mum comment

Rocco Buttiglione, Italy's disputed candidate for EU justice and security commissioner, attacked Italian media yesterday for what he said was a total distortion of his views on single mothers.

Buttiglione was quoted by some media yesterday as telling a conference in northwest Italy that "children who don't have a father but only a mother are children of a mother who is not very good."

But Buttiglione quickly issued a statement saying his remarks had been distorted and he had actually been talking about political relations between the United States and Europe.

"I was talking about relations between the United States and Europe, certainly not about single mothers, whom I fully support," he said.

"I have to condemn the behaviour of part of the press which, by cutting and pasting some phrases, reported me as saying things I never said."

Buttiglione, Italy's EU Affairs minister, said that to illustrate his views on US-European relations he had drawn on remarks by Robert Kagan, a former adviser to ex US President Ronald Reagan, who had described the United States as the child of Mars and Europe as the child of Venus.

Kagan's analogy was intended to reflect the more aggressive foreign policy of the United States compared with Europe, which tends to draw back from the use of force, Buttiglione said.

"Yesterday I said it would be best if Europe and the United States stay together in order that the children (the citizens of the two) have a mother and a father."

A fellow minister in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government said she was taken aback by Buttiglione's comment on single mothers as they were reported, but suspected he had been misinterpreted.

"It seems impossible to me that he could have said something like that," Equal Opportunity Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo told Corriere della Sera.

In his statement, Buttiglione stressed that single mothers had his full respect. (Reuters)

"It's obvious that if...children have a father and a mother that is better, but that takes nothing away from the respect due to the women who face the task (of bringing up children) on their own," he said.

On Monday, the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee voted to reject Buttiglione after he told a confirmation hearing he regarded homosexuality as a sin and that marriage existed for women to have children and be protected by their husband.

It was the first time an assembly panel had ever voted against a nominee.

Socialists in the European Parliament threatened on Thursday to reject the entire new EU executive if Buttiglione kept his job as justice chief after his comments on homosexuality and marriage.