FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during the political festival Atreju, organised by Meloni's Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia) right-wing party, in Rome, Italy, December 14, 2024. REUTERS/Ciro De Luca/File Photo
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida/ROME (Reuters) -Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made a surprise trip to Florida to meet with Donald Trump late on Saturday, as the key European leader sought to strengthen ties with the president-elect before his inauguration on Jan. 20.
No details of the talks were released, but Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini said on Sunday they covered a range of issues including the plight of Cecilia Sala, an Italian journalist detained last month in Iran.
"Well done Giorgia Meloni for visiting Donald Trump to talk about peace, industrial and commercial cooperation, security, and the freeing of Cecilia Sala," Salvini, leader of the League coalition party, posted on X.
Members of Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort welcomed Meloni with applause after an introduction by the president-elect, according to videos shared on social media by reporters and others.
"This is very exciting. I'm here with a fantastic woman, the prime minister of Italy," Trump told the Mar-a-Lago crowd, according to a media pool report. "She’s really taken Europe by storm."
Meloni is seen as a potentially strong partner for Trump given her conservative credentials and the stability of the right-wing coalition she has led in Italy since late 2022.Meloni has also forged a close relationship with billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, a close Trump ally.
Tommaso Foti, Italy's EU and regional affairs minister, said on Sunday that the meeting, which had not been announced in advance, showed that Italy could act as "a diplomatic bridge between two worlds: the European Union and the USA".
Meloni's trip comes days before she is to meet U.S. President Joe Biden during a visit to Rome from Thursday to Jan. 12. Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election and is preparing to return to the White House.
Trump and Meloni watched a screening of a documentary questioning the criminal investigations and legal scrutiny faced by John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer who was central to Trump's unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
One of the biggest challenges facing Meloni is the arrest of journalist Sala in Tehran on Dec. 19.
Sala was detained three days after Mohammad Abedini, an Iranian businessman, was arrested at Milan's Malpensa airport on a U.S. warrant for allegedly supplying drone parts that Washington says were used in an attack last January that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan. Iran has denied involvement in the attack.
Meloni became the latest in the handful of foreign leaders who have visited Trump in Florida since the Nov. 5 election. He has met with Argentinian President Javier Milei, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
(Reporting by Francesca Landini in Milan and Nathan Layne in West Palm Beach. Additional reporting by Keith Weir and Crispian Balmer. Editing by Mark Potter)
