Silvio Berlusconi, who has been engulfed in scandals since his wife, Veronica Lario, demanded a divorce in May, declared the summit a success and added that a press campaign to unseat him over his relationships with showgirls had failed.

He said the had established a “very cordial relationship” with Mr Obama, adding that at the gala dinner on Thursday “he told me about his private life and I told him about mine”. This conversation was not, alas, caught by a passing microphone.

Carla Bruni Sarkozy, who missed the first two days of the summit, toured the ruins of L’Aquila and pledged that France would pay half of the approximately €9 million to restore the 17th-century church of Santa Maria del Suffragio. “It’s terrible,” she said, adding that she had wanted to come to L’Aquila for some time. “I am Italian and I want to help.”

The Berlusconi media will not be mollified by Carla’s sudden reattachment to Italy — especially after saying last year that she was glad to be French when the Italian Prime Minister described President Obama as “tanned”. Il Giornale, Silvio Berlusconi’s newspaper, attacked her for her “snobbery”. “How do you say party-pooper in French?” its editorial asked.

In their first meeting yesterday Gordon Brown asked Muammar Gaddafi to intervene in the case of a British child abducted by her Libyan father and taken to his country. Britain is seeking the repatriation of Nadia Fawzi, 6, who was taken from her mother Sarah Taylor, of Wigan, in 2007. Mr Gaddafi — who as usual brought a Beduin-style tent with him and a contingent of female bodyguards — undertook to look into the case.

Nine governments have “adopted” monuments devastated by the Abruzzo earthquake. Spain will donate €50 million to restore the Spanish fortress at L’Aquila, the US will restore the church of Santa Maria Paganica — Michelle Obama’s choice — while Britain is reported to have promised to help the World Monuments Fund to restore the monastery of San Clemente a Casauria at a cost of €1.6 million.

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