Italy's League party, low in polls, picks a provocative candidate for European Parliament election

ROME (AP) — He was fired by the defense minister after writing a book deemed offensive to women, gays and Blacks. He is under investigation by Rome prosecutors for allegedly inciting racial hatred. He set off a firestorm over suggestions that disabled children be taught separately at school.

And on Tuesday, Gen. Roberto Vannacci, one of Italy’s most experienced army generals, joined Italy’s deputy premier and leader of the right-wing League party, Matteo Salvini, as the League’s headline candidate for upcoming European Parliament elections.

Salvini’s gamble to put the provocative Vannacci out front for the June 6-9 vote is something of a Hail Mary pass for the League, which has hemorrhaged support in recent years to the more hard-right Brothers of Italy party of Premier Giorgia Meloni.

By taking advantage of the media storm over Vannacci, Salvini is trying to breathe new life into his party, a junior partner in Meloni’s government, analysts said.

“Matteo Salvini has a party in crisis,” said Lorenzo Castellani, a professor of political history at Rome’s Luiss university. He noted that the League took 34% of the vote in 2019 European Parliament elections, and today is polling no more than 8%.

“He (Vannacci) has become a media personality whom Salvini is using to try to have some more support, let’s say a few tens of thousands more votes that this general could bring the League,” Castellani said in a telephone interview.

Vannacci’s candidacy has dominated Italian political discourse, headlines and newscasts for days and drew a standing-room only audience Tuesday at Rome’s Hadrian’s Temple, an ancient Roman temple-turned-conference center not far from parliament.

Officially, Salvini was presenting his new memoir-manifesto “Against the Wind: The Italy that Doesn’t Surrender.” But the event represented the first Salvini-Vannacci outing, and Vannacci used it as a campaign stop to outline his views on migration, Europe’s Christian roots and the need to defend Europe’s borders.

He lamented, for example, that the official poster of the Paris Olympic Games, an artistic rendering of the French capital, doesn't feature any crosses atop the Hôtel des Invalides. Their absence created a brief controversy last month in France when the poster was unveiled.

“Unfortunately, all these symbols that should inspire us a sense of belonging have been erased, blurred, diluted, almost as to give an image that Europe should look more like a bunch of junk, where everyone is included but no one feels like they belong,” Vannacci said Tuesday.

Vannacci led Italian troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya — and before that in the Balkans, Rwanda and Somalia — and was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit in 2018 for his leadership against the Islamic State group.

But Italy’s defense minister fired him in August as head of the military’s geographical institute, and later disciplined him, after he self-published “The World In Reverse,” a manifesto in which Vannacci let loose on his beliefs about LGBTQ+ people, the environmental lobby, multiculturalism and migration.

“Gen. Vannacci expressed opinions that discredit the army, the defense ministry and the constitution,” Defense Minister Guido Crosetto tweeted at the time, announcing disciplinary action against him for having written the book without his superiors’ authorization.

In February, Rome prosecutors opened an investigation into alleged incitement to racial hatred, Italian news reports said. And this week, Vannacci kept the outrage alive, on the left and right, by telling La Stampa newspaper that disabled children should be taught separately in schools.

“This has nothing to do with freedom of opinion, but is offensive to the history and culture of our country,” said Sandra Savino, a regional leader of the center-right Forza Italia in Fruili Venezia Giulia.

Salvini has defended Vannacci’s right to express his opinions and accused the media of taking his comments about disability out of context. On Tuesday, he said he approached Vannacci after the firestorm over his book in the summer, and the two hit it off.

He said he didn’t share all of Vannacci’s ideas, but said Vannacci doesn’t share all of his, either.

Vannacci, for his part, said he knew he was taking a risk by publishing his book, but believed he owed it to his children to speak his truth and now fight in politics for them.

“I wanted to give them a better future, a better Europe,” he said.

Salvini’s choice has divided the League, with its more center-right base opposed to the more hard-right choice that Vannacci represents.

Castellani, the Luiss professor, said such internal dissent underscored the problems the League is facing and risks that Salvini might be replaced.

“Salvini is creating a media personality, which might be an opportunity for him,” he said. “But a personality is always dangerous because he can become a political adversary, or he can become embarrassing or voters can get bored with him.”

The League leader Matteo Salvini, right, arrives to his book presentation flanked by General Roberto Vannacci, one of the League candidates at the next European Parliament election, in Rome, Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

The League leader Matteo Salvini, right, arrives to his book presentation flanked by General Roberto Vannacci, one of the League candidates at the next European Parliament election, in Rome, Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

General Roberto Vannacci attends the presentation of a book by the League leader Matteo Salvini in Rome, Tuesday, April 30, 2024. Vannacci will be one of the League candidates at the next European Parliament elections. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

General Roberto Vannacci attends the presentation of a book by the League leader Matteo Salvini in Rome, Tuesday, April 30, 2024. Vannacci will be one of the League candidates at the next European Parliament elections. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

The League leader Matteo Salvini, left, arrives to his book presentation flanked by General Roberto Vannacci, one of the League candidates at the next European Parliament election, in Rome, Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The world's leading artificial intelligence companies pledged at the start of a mini summit on AI to develop the technology safely, including pulling the plug if they can't rein in the most extreme risks.

World leaders are expected to hammer out further agreements on artificial intelligence as they gathered virtually Tuesday to discuss AI’s potential risks but also ways to promote its benefits and innovation.

The AI Seoul Summit is a low-key follow-up to November’s high-profile AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom, where participating countries agreed to work together to contain the potentially “catastrophic” risks posed by breakneck advances in AI.

The two-day meeting -- co-hosted by the South Korean and U.K. governments -- also comes as major tech companies like Meta, OpenAI and Google roll out the latest versions of their AI models.

They're among 16 AI companies that made voluntary comittments to AI safety as the talks got underway, according to a British government announcement. The companies, which also include Amazon, Microsoft, France's Mistral AI, China's Zhipu.ai, and G42 of the United Arab Emirates, vowed to ensure safety of their most cutting edge AI models with promises of accountable governance and public transparency.

The pledge includes publishing safety frameworks setting out how they will measure risks of these models. In extreme cases where risks are severe and “intolerable," AI companies will have to hit the kill switch and stop developing or deploying their models and systems if they can't mitigate the risks.

Since the U.K. meeting last year, the AI industry has “increasingly focused on the most pressing concerns, including mis- and dis- information, data security, bias and keeping humans in the loop,” said Aiden Gomez CEO of Cohere, one of the AI companies that signed the pact. "It is essential that we continue to consider all possible risks, while prioritizing our efforts on those most likely to create problems if not properly addressed.”

On Tuesday evening, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are to meet other world leaders, industry bosses and heads of international organizations for a virtual conference. The online summit will be followed by an in-person meeting of digital ministers, experts and others on Wednesday, according to organizers.

“It is just six months since world leaders met at Bletchley, but even in this short space of time, the landscape of AI has changed dramatically,” Yoon and Sunak said in a joint article published in South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper and the U.K.’s online news site Monday. “The pace of change will only continue to accelerate, so our work must accelerate too.”

While the U.K. meeting centered on AI safety issues, the agenda for this week’s gathering was expanded to include “innovation and inclusivity,” Wang Yun-jong, a deputy director of national security in South Korea, told reporters Monday.

Wang said participants will subsequently “discuss not only the risks posed by AI but also its positive aspects and how it can contribute to humanity in a balanced manner."

The AI agreement will include the outcomes of discussions on safety, innovation and inclusivity, according to Park Sang-wook, senior presidential adviser for science and technology for President Yoon.

Last year's Bletchley meeting attracted world leaders and tech luminaries like Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The Seoul summit, serving as an interim meeting until another in-person event next year in France, drew less important representatives from government and tech companies.

China, which attended the Bletchley gathering, isn't joining the virtual summit though it will send a representative to Wednesday's in-person meeting, the South Korean presidential office said.

Governments around the world have been scrambling to formulate regulations for AI even as the technology makes rapid advances and is poised to transform many aspects of daily life, from education and the workplace to copyrights and privacy. There are concerns that advances in AI could take away jobs, trick people and spread disinformation.

This week's meeting is just one of a slew of efforts to draw up AI guardrails. The U.N. General Assembly has approved its first resolution on the safe use of AI systems, while the U.S. and China recent held their first high-level talks on AI and the European Union's world-first AI Act is set to take effect later this year.

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Chan contributed to this report from London.

FILE - Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunk, center, speaks during a plenary session at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, England, on Nov. 2, 2023. South Korea is set to host a mini-summit this week on risks and regulation of artificial intelligence, following up on an inaugural AI safety meeting in Britain in 2023 that drew a diverse crowd of tech luminaries, researchers and officials. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, Pool, File)

A screen shows an announcement of the AI Seoul Summit in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, May 21, 2024. World leaders are expected to adopt a new agreement on artificial intelligence when they gather virtually Tuesday to discuss AI’s potential risks but also ways to promote its benefits and innovation. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A screen shows an announcement of the AI Seoul Summit in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, May 21, 2024. World leaders are expected to adopt a new agreement on artificial intelligence when they gather virtually Tuesday to discuss AI’s potential risks but also ways to promote its benefits and innovation. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)