That, June 6 -- The Italian government is pressing hard on two fronts it cannot control and betting that neither Moscow, Kyiv, Tehran, nor Washington can afford to ignore Rome.

effectively Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's chief of staff - made plain on Saturday afternoon in the hill town of Assisi. Speaking at a cultural conference framed around the 800th anniversary of the death of Saint Francis, the patron saint of Italy, Mantovano said the government is "strongly committed" to easing current international tensions, describing Italy as an active interlocutor with "the principal parties in conflict" rather than a bystander waiting on American-led diplomacy.

"Italy has always played its part by talking with everyone in an extremely compl...