Italy sees red over Libya demanding green fly-past

The Italian Frecce Tricolori (tricoloured arrows) air acrobatic team perform in Rome in this November 9, 2008 file photo.

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's ties with former colony Libya hit a snag on Tuesday when its air force jets, invited to celebrate Muammar Gaddafi's 40 years in power, refused to trail green smoke instead of Italy's red, white and green.

Italy's opposition is furious that the "Tri-Color Arrows" acrobatic jets are participating at all in Tripoli because of Gaddafi's decision to receive Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi on his return home from a Scottish prison.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, criticized for visiting Gaddafi in Tripoli on Sunday to celebrate the first anniversary of a friendship treaty that has unleashed major contracts for Italian firms, said it was red, white and green, or nothing.

"I agreed last night with the defense minister that the Tri-Color Arrows will only fly with the tri-color display," he said on a visit to Poland.

Asked by reporters if that meant the squadron would not participate otherwise, he said: "Yes."

The Italian jets later did their overfly spewing out the three colors of the national flag.

Italy's ambassador had earlier said Libya insisted on the fly-past releasing all-green smoke -- green being the color of the Libyan flag and the traditional color of Islam. Gaddafi is a self-styled defender of the Islamic faith.

Berlusconi has put Italy at the forefront of diplomatic and commercial overtures to Gaddafi, who has visited Rome twice this year following the 2008 treaty under which Italy agreed to pay $5 billion compensation for colonial misdeeds from 1911-1943.

"I think our trade diplomacy is yielding extraordinary results," Berlusconi told his family's newspaper Il Giornale on Tuesday, listing some major Libyan contracts won by Italian firms like oil and gas group Eni and power firm Enel.

(Reporting by Stephen Brown; Editing by Angus MacSwan)