Silvio Berlusconi in focus on Clinton's WikiLeaks tour...

Berlusconi in focus on Clinton's WikiLeaks tour...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has done a lot of explaining to foreign leaders after the embarrassing Wikileaks release of U.S. embassy cables -- but few needed as much placating as Italy's Silvio Berlusconi.

Clinton took the opportunity of a meeting at a Kazakhstan summit to personally reassure the Italian prime minister, whose feathers were clearly ruffled by U.S. cables which called him "feckless" and a hard-partyer.

"We have no better friend, we have no one who supports the American policies as consistently as Prime Minister Berlusconi has," Clinton told the news cameras as the two met.

"The United States, Republican and Democratic administrations like, know that they can count on the prime minister to support the policies and values that Italy and the United States share in common," Clinton said.

Berlusconi has publicly laughed off the WikiLeaks cables, which focused on the 74-year-old prime minister's private life and described him as "feckless, vain and ineffective as a modern European leader."

But it appears they hit a nerve nonetheless. U.S. officials said Berlusconi brought the matter up with Clinton in their discussions in Astana, Kazakhstan's futuristic capital.

Posted in: Silvio Berlusconi