The Libyan leader starts a three-day visit to Rome today that promises to be as colourful as it is historic. It is his first visit to Italy since he deposed King Idris and gained power in 1969 — “for 40 years it was more likely that Gaddafi would visit Saturn than Rome”, the Libyan state newspaper al-Jamahiriya said in an editorial.

With his 300-strong entourage, including 40 female bodyguards, Mr Gaddafi will be staying in the Villa Doria Pamphili, a restored mansion used for government receptions.

The tent, officials have hastened to explain, will only be used to receive guests. The colonel’s unpredictability — allied to the flamboyance of his host, Silvio Berlusconi — means that Italy is expecting an entertaining 72 hours. The highlight of the trip will be the meeting that Colonel Gaddafi has requested with 700 Italian women from the worlds of “politics, industry, and culture”.

Libyan officials say that Colonel Gaddafi is “an emancipator of women” and that the proportion of women in the Libyan workforce has risen from 6 per cent 40 years ago to more than 20 per cent today. He held a similar meeting in Paris two years ago with 1,000 female guests, who were told that he wanted to “save European women”.

Among those in line to meet Mr Gaddafi is Mara Carfagna, the former topless model who Mr Berlusconi has brought into his Government as Equal Opportunities Minister. The Prime Minister did so even though two years ago his wife, Veronica Lario, demanded (and got) a public apology from her husband for praising Ms Carfagna’s beauty and telling her that he would marry her “like a shot” if he could.

Besides the grandstanding, however, the trip has a very serious purpose. Libya was occupied by Italy in 1911 and made an Italian colony until 1943. The country nurses grievances over thousands of Libyans killed or put in concentration camps under Italian rule; Italy still resents the expulsion of 20,000 Italians who had settled in Libya when Colonel Gaddafi seized power.

But there have been growing political and commercial contacts. In August Mr Berlusconi flew to Benghazi to offer an apology for the colonial era and £3 billion in compensation.

The move was not purely altruistic: Italy is hoping for lucrative contracts as Libya, which supplies a quarter of Italian oil imports — and has stakes in Fiat and Juventus football club — ponders investing its petrodollars in companies such as the energy giants Eni and Enel and the UniCredit bank.

A further gain for the Berlusconi Government is that Libya, which once used the boatloads of immigrants who head for Italy from its shores as a means of putting pressure on Rome, has accepted joint patrols in its territorial waters and is taking back migrants intercepted in the Mediterranean.

The trip has its pitfalls, including Mr Gaddafi’s visit to Rome University, where students plan to protest against “the Libyan dictator” for “co-operating with the Italian Government over the repatriation of immigrants”.

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