Monday 04 May 2009
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is demanding a public apology from his wife a day after she announced that she was filing for divorce and a week after she published an open letter complaining of her husband's penchant for pretty women.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi demanded an apology Monday from his wife for her public complaints over his roving eye and said their stormy marriage was heading for divorce. "Veronica must apologise publicly," the 72-year-old Berlusconi told Corriere della Sera newspaper as he went on the offensive in the couple's public row. "And I don't know if that will be enough," he said after press reports that Veronica Lario now wants a divorce from the billionaire media baron. Lario, a 52-year-old former actress, last week issued an open letter complaining because Berlusconi chose many young women with no political experience to stand for his party in European Union elections in June. One was a former Miss Italy contestant. "It's the third time she's done this to me in the middle of an election campaign. It's too much," the flamboyant premier told the daily. 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." Berlusconi told reporters Sunday: "This is a painful personal episode which should remain private, and it does not seem to me to be right to be talking about it." 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. The couple, who have three children, are rarely seen in public together, while Berlusconi is a bon vivant known for his stamina at late-night dinner parties. Lario was infuriated by her husband's decision to attend the 18th birthday party in Naples last week for the blonde daughter of one of his business associates, media reports said. She complained because he never went to any of his own children's coming-of-age parties. "My marriage is over. I can't stay with someone who cavorts with minors," Lario was quoted as saying by one of her friends. "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 'Grandpa' and about their meetings in Rome and Milan. "This is no longer acceptable. How can I stay with such a man?" she was quoted as saying in La Stampa. Berlusconi hit back, telling the same newspaper: "Madam says I'm running around with 17-year-old girls. It's an assertion I cannot allow. I am friends with her father, that's all. I swear." In January 2007, the one-time cruise ship crooner issued a public apology to Lario after she learned through the press of his verbal dalliance with a young lawmaker. "Please forgive me, and take this public testimony ... as an act of love, one among many," he said after Lario wrote a letter to the daily La Repubblica demanding his contrition, which she said he had failed to show in private. Speaking to La Stampa, Berlusconi said he was "worried and disappointed" this time. "I've stayed on in a difficult situation out of love for the children, but now it's over. ... It's an affair that should have remained private," said Berlusconi, who also has two children from his first marriage. "I can't accept that she wound up going to the newspapers." The public divorce row is a rare spectacle in Italy. "It's an unprecedented public outpouring," said political scientist Mario Tarchi. "Before you didn't even know if leaders had wives or children, if they were divorced or not. You didn't talk about divorce in the media."
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