Italian Ambassador Franco Giordano stormed out of the official opening of an exhibition on the Etruscan people at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam on Thursday.

He was outraged when public broadcaster NOS correspondent Andrea Vreede compared Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with sex-obsessed Etruscan kings. Apparently the Amsterdam mayor Eberhard van der Laan tried to hush up the row, but to no avail.

Ms Vreede works for the NOS news, but gave the speech à titre personnel. “I gave a lecture in which I compared the world of rich Etruscan men from back then with modern Italian men in power,” she explains. “Of course you can’t help mentioning Berlusconi.”

Ambassador Giodano, who doesn’t speak Dutch, didn’t understand the speech. According to the journalist, he became angry when she mentioned some negative Italian terms which the Italian press often uses in articles on Berlusconi.

“I think it’s a shame my words led to this commotion,” says Ms Vreede. “I meant no harm.” In a reaction, a spokesperson of the University of Amsterdam, to which the museum belongs, says he is “not at all happy with the incident. Someone compared it with telling an Irish joke in front of a group of Irish. This was unacceptable.”

(gsh/hs)

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