ITALIAN INVESTIGATION:IF ITALIAN prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had hoped to leave his various domestic problems far behind him at this week's EU summit in Brussels, he was just a little mistaken.
As the Italian premier settled down for business at the beginning of yesterday’s session, he was overheard by a Sky Italia TV camera-microphone in animated discussion on his mobile phone with his defence lawyer, Niccolò Ghedini.
Mr Berlusconi was overheard to say that he was totally “p***** off” by a variety of newspaper headlines relative to the continuing Bari investigation featuring allegations that a number of young women were paid to attend parties at his private Rome and Sardinia residences.
“I never said that I was being spied on and I never spoke of any obscure plot against me,” said the prime minister in reference to various headlines from yesterday morning, adding that he would instruct his under-secretary Paolo Bonaiuti to issue a statement later in the day.
The statement duly arrived with Mr Bonaiuti lamenting the fact that “certain newspapers” continue to attribute statements to the prime minister which he never made.
Later in a news conference, Mr Berlusconi himself angrily dismissed all the allegations relative to the Bari “Call Girl” investigation, saying: “There is nothing to clear up. It’s all perfectly clear; this is a load of rubbish. And just as I got rid of it all [the city’s garbage] in Naples, so I will get rid of all this,” he thundered.
One long-term ally of Mr Berlusconi, the Italian Catholic Church, however, yesterday appeared to express a certain concern about recent developments.
An editorial in L'Avennire, the newspaper controlled by the Italian Bishops Conference, yesterday called for a "clarification" from Mr Berlusconi vis-a-vis the Bari investigation in order to avoid the "danger" that in the end "the entire country will pay for this".