Berlusconi says he was architect behind end of Cold War

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said during Italy’s election campaign that he was the key architect behind the end of the Cold War. “When I was in government in 2001, I said publicly that I wanted to end the Cold War,” the leader of the center-right bloc said on a morning television talk show. Historians say the Cold War ended between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Reuters reported. Berlusconi said it ended in May 2002 at a NATO summit he hosted near Rome attended by US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “And I succeeded [in ending the Cold War] because here in Rome… in 2002 I convinced George Bush and Vladimir Putin, using all my talents of friendly relations, to end the Cold War,” he said on Thursday. He said this was done with “the signing of a treaty with NATO” that foresaw cooperation between Russia and the alliance in many sectors.