ITALY: Prime Minister Mr Silvio Berlusconi demanded 15 million in damages yesterday from Italy's main opposition leader, who accused him of orchestrating a smear campaign against the centre-left.
Judicial sources said Mr Berlusconi presented the defamation suit against Mr Piero Fassino, head of the Democrats of the Left, following a war of words over a 1997 telecom deal in Serbia that has poisoned relations between the two political blocs.
Mr Fassino said last month Mr Berlusconi was the "puppeteer" behind media claims that he and European Commission President Romano Prodi pocketed millions of euros in kickbacks from the business transaction with Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia.
Mr Berlusconi, a media mogul, took umbrage at the accusation and ordered his lawyers into action - the first time his bitter political feud with the left has ended up in the courts. "It is unacceptable . . . for assertions to be made that the current prime minister instigated, or worse, was directly involved in calumny," Mr Berlusconi's suit said.
Mr Prodi was prime minister and Mr Fassino an under-secretary at the Foreign Ministry in 1997 when former state-run Telecom Italia took a 29 per cent stake in Telekom Srbija. The Italian firm paid 450 million for the minority holding, only to resell the shares five years later for less than half the price.
When Berlusconi's government won power two years ago, it ordered an investigation into charges from a finance consultant that Mr Fassino, Mr Prodi and one-time foreign minister Mr Lamberto Dini received 225 million in back-handers. All three men deny the allegations.
Reports on the deal regularly appear on the front page of Il Giornale newspaper, which is edited by the prime minister's younger brother. Mr Fassino's party said it would seek €15 million in damages from Il Giornale.