Rome, May 28: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday
denied ever having a "spicy" relationship with an underage
girl, saying he would resign if rumours about his ties to a
teenage aspiring model were true.
"I have answered the only question that anyone has the
right to ask me: 'Prime minister, have you had a, let's say,
spicy, or more than spicy, relationship with an underage
girl?' Absolutely not," Berlusconi said.
"I swore on the heads of my children," he told reporters.
"I've also said that if all this was true, I would have to
resign immediately. Beware of what you read in the
newspapers."
Berlusconi, 72, is under constant pressure to explain his
relationship with Noemi Letizia, the 18-year-old at the centre
of a highly public row between the billionaire prime minister
and his second wife Veronica Lario, who has filed for divorce.
The Italian leader has maintained that he met Letizia
through her parents whom he has known for many years, while
her ex-boyfriend claims Berlusconi contacted her out of the
blue, and directly, only last year.
The ex-boyfriend told the left-leaning daily La
Repubblica in an interview published Saturday that Letizia was
among a bevy of aspiring starlets whose pictures were in a
file left on Berlusconi's desk by the head of one of his TV
networks.
Also today, three of Berlusconi's five children came to
his defence over his links to Letizia in their first public
comments on the scandal.
Opposition leader Dario Franceschini "has no right to
insult Silvio Berlusconi. Who does he think he is? Doesn't he
realise the seriousness of his accusations? He should be
really ashamed!" Marina Berlusconi, 42, said in remarks to
leading daily Corriere della Sera.
"I am indignant, furious," she said, adding: "That's
enough now!"
Berlusconi's eldest daughter from his first marriage was
reacting to a rhetorical question posed by Franceschini
yesterday at a campaign rally for European Union elections to
be held June 6-7 in Italy.
"Italian men and women, would you have Berlusconi raise
your children?" he asked.
"To insult my father is to insult me, as a woman and
mother who passes on the values I learned from my parents to
my children," said Marina Berlusconi, president of Fininvest,
the company that controls her father's media empire Mediaset.
Her younger brother and Mediaset vice president Pier
Silvio, 40, chimed in, speaking to the ANSA news agency: "How
could he say such a thing? Berlusconi's values are my values:
love of work, generosity... respect for others, which
Franceschini seems to forget."
The youngest offspring 20-year-old Luigi, from his
marriage to Lario, asked: "How can politics judge Berlusconi
as a father?"
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, May 28, 2009, 20:11