Berlusconi snaps back in melodramatic divorce battle

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 9:12 PM Posted by Beijing News


In a script worthy of a soap opera on one of Silvio Berlusconi's bubbly television channels, the billionaire Italian leader said Monday that divorce from his wife is all but inevitable.

Having bitten his tongue Sunday when scorned former actress Veronica Lario revealed to the media through friends that her "marriage is over," the 72-year-old -- accused of "cavorting with minors" by his companion of nearly three decades -- came back out fighting.

"Veronica must apologise publicly," the one-time cruise ship crooner Berlusconi told Monday's Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"Madam says I'm running around with 17-year-old girls. It's an assertion I cannot allow," Berlusconi said.

"I am friends with her father, that's all. I swear."

The pretty blonde at the centre of the row turned 18 last week, and Lario's patience finally snapped when it emerged that Berlusconi leapt into her birthday celebrations in Naples, offering her a gold necklace.

The 52-year-old was reportedly furious at his presence, noting that he never showed up at any of his own children's coming-of-age parties.

Lario last week issued an open letter complaining over reports that Berlusconi was considering a string of young women with no political experience to stand for his centre-right party in European Union elections in June.

One is a former Miss Italy contestant.

"My marriage is over. I can't stay with someone who cavorts with minors," Lario was quoted as saying by a friend.

"I read in the papers about how he has been hanging around a minor -- because he must have known her before she was 18 -- and how she called him 'Papy' and about their meetings in Rome and Milan.

"How can I stay with such a man?" she was quoted as saying in La Stampa.

The flamboyant premier hit back in Corriere, snarling: "It's the third time she's done this to me in the middle of an election campaign. It's too much."

Asked whether the near 19-year marriage could survive, Berlusconi said: "I don't think so.

"I don't know if I want it to this time."

With a huge divorce settlement all but certain, the Italian press has begun totting up the Berlusconi family's complex fortune, built from a modest construction company into a sprawling media empire estimated by Forbes to be worth some 6.5 billion dollars 4.5 billion euros.

Berlusconi's Fininvest empire includes three television channels teeming with game shows and soap operas featuring scantily clad starlets.

Lario's remarks about cavorting with minors "doesn't sit well ahead of the elections," he said. "But it won't do anything for the left."



A stuntman walks on a tightrope in China to break a world record. REUTERS/Stringer

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