Farage 'not a racist,' Grillo tells Daily Telegraph -update2

(ANSA) - Rome, May 30 - Italy's anti-establishment leader Beppe Grillo on Friday defended his possible future ally Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from accusations that he is a racist. Grillo, a comic who leads the 5-Star Movement, told the British Daily Telegraph: "Nigel Farage is no racist". The firebrand leader, who scored a disappointing 21% in the European elections, said he saw "much common ground" with the flamboyant Farage, whose party was the first outside Labour and the Tories to win an election in 100 years.
    The flamboyant pair met for lunch in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss forming a Euroskeptic EP bloc, one that is not allied with Marine Le Pen's French Front National and other far-right opponents to European integration. "If it works, it would be wonderful to see the ranks of citizens grow on our side," said Farage in a UKIP press release at the time. "If we can reach an agreement, we could have fun causing a lot of trouble in Brussels".
    Grillo told the Telegraph that no formal agreement has been reached: "The meeting was just to get to know him". Some of Grillo's own MPs, who insist they are neither rightist nor leftist, have taken umbrage with a possible Farage alliance given his anti-immigrant views. "He is not the way he is described, just as I am not the fascist and Nazi the Italian papers describe me as," Grillo told the Telegraph. "He wants to control flows of immigration in Europe like us. It is not true he is a racist," added Grillo, pointing to Farage's refusal to ally with Italy's anti-immigrant Northern League, which is trying to form its own European Parliament bloc with Le Pen. The comedian said the next step was for the M5S to vote online, as it often does regarding the direction of the Internet-based party, regarding whether it had any platforms in common with Farage. "We won't change our program, we won't change our ideas, but if we are talking about concepts like direct democracy then we have something in common," he told the Telegraph.
    Grillo added the movement was looking for partners at the European Parliament.
    "With 17 MEPs, if you form an autonomous group, you are on the outside," he said.