ROME – Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi and US Secretary of State John Kerry met in Rome on Thursday for summits on the conflict in Syria and Palestinian-Israeli relations.
The meeting was also attended by Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, head of the internationally recognized Syrian opposition alliance, US Ambassador David Thorne and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Minister Terzi said that Italy is “very much in favor” of President Barack Obama’s proposed free-trade agreement between the United States and the European Union.
“Italy is a strong supporter of this very big project within the European Union,” Terzi added. Negotiations on the US-EU accord, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), are planned for summer and expected to go on for at least two years.
Obama announced the free-trade-agreement plan during his State of the Union speech earlier this month.
Speaking on the sidelines of the meeting in Rome, in which had taken part also Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, the head of the internationally recognized Syrian opposition alliance, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he was “personally very confident in Italy’s ability and desire” to find a solution after elections this week that produced no clear majority in parliament. “Because Italy has a strong democracy,” Kerry added.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi, right, as he arrives at Villa Madama in Rome 
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi, right, as he arrives at Villa Madama in Rome
The parliament to emerge from recent general elections is the youngest and has the highest number of women in the history of the Italian republic, according to data published by farmers’ association Coldiretti on Tuesday.
Across both chambers members will have an average age of 48 years and 31% will be women, the study found. The party with the youngest representation is the anti-establishment Five Star Movement led by Genoa comic Beppe Grillo, with an average age of 37 years across both houses (33 in the Chamber of Deputies and 46 in the Senate).
”Hopes of change rest with them in a country such as Italy that has the oldest ruling class in Europe, with an average age of 59 years, rising to 67 among bankers, 63 among university professors and 61 among managers of parastatal companies,” said Coldiretti president Sergio Marini.
And change will probably come.
The ‘youngest’ parliament in Italian history set to change the country with new economic ideas and a US tie.
Comedian Beppe Grillo, the surprise, true winner of Italy’s inconclusive February 24-25 elections, has a secret card up his sleeve: an economic ”guru” with close ties to Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
For his economics policies the Genoese comedian turns to Mauro Gallegati, an economics professor at the Polytechnic University of the Marche region who has taught at Cambridge and Columbia University and has worked with Stiglitz.
”We have to invent totally new professions, placing bets on culture and tourism” said the economist.
Stiglitz, who won the Nobel prize in economics in 2001 while a member of Columbia University’s faculty, will not work directly on the M5S platform, Gallegati says, ”but he will give us a hand. As will one of his closest collaborators, Bruce Greenwald, the guru of gurus on Wall Street.” Stiglitz has published a string of bestsellers including Fair Trade For All (2005) and Making Globalization Work (2006).
Last year’s The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future laid out a wide-ranging agenda to create a more dynamic economy and fairer and more equal society.
The blurb said: “As those at the top continue to enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they often fail to realize that, as Stiglitz highlights, ‘their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live…”
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