Merkel to hold talks with Monti in Rome on Friday

Feb 15, 2012, 10:38 GMT

Rome - Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti will host German Chancellor Angela Merkel for talks in Rome on Friday that will address the Greek economic crisis, among other issues.

Monti's office announced the meeting late Tuesday, saying the two leaders would meet at noon (1100 GMT), then hold a joint news conference.

'We will have a deep discussion,' on topics including Greece, Monti said in an interview with private television new channel Sky TG24.

In Berlin, Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert, said Merkel would meet afterwards with President Giorgio Napolitano, who had invited her to lunch.

Seibert said the Monti talks, 'on bilateral, economic and European topics,' would begin at 12.15 pm with a news conference following at 1.15 pm. Monti visited Berlin on January 11.

Monti and Merkel have disagreed over how Greece's debt crisis should be handled.

At a European Union summit last month, Monti described German proposals to put Greece's budget under EU control as 'far-fetched and unpleasant.'

During the interview with Sky TG24, Monti said Merkel transmitted 'a degree of extraordinary reliability' and was 'consistent over time.'

However, such consistency made a person 'take even longer to change their position,' Monti added.

A telephone conversation between Merkel and Napolitano on October 20 last year has been widely interpreted as the trigger that led to the resignation 23 days later of then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, to be followed by technocrat Monti's appointment.

Napolitano, 86, who supervised the transition, later said he had only talked with Merkel about Italy's measures to reduce its deficit, the defence of the euro and structural reforms, and denied that they discussed domestic politics.

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