Silvio Berlusconi's wife has said she wants a divorce claiming the Italian Prime Minister's choice of young, female election candidates is 'shamelessly trashy'.
Veronica Lario signalled her intention in a newspaper interview after a public row with her husband over his party's selection process for the European elections.
‘I have been forced to take this step, I don't want to add anything else,’ La Stampa newspaper quoted Ms Lario, 52, as saying, adding she had already contacted a lawyer.
La Repubblica daily and ANSA news agency also carried the report.
In a two-line statement, the conservative Prime Minister said: ‘This is a personal matter that saddens me, that is private, and it seems appropriate not to talk about it.’
Last week , Ms Lario, who two years ago demanded a public apology from her husband for flirting with younger women, said his party's choice of female candidates for the European elections was a ‘shamelessly trashy’ process.
She also accused him of going to the Naples birthday bash of an 18-year-old woman, the daughter of a political acquaintance, but not attending the coming-of-age parties of his own children.
Mr Berlusconi, a 72-year-old media tycoon, told reporters he was sorry his wife had apparently believed ‘what she read in the papers’, blaming a campaign against him ‘hyped by the leftist press’.
Mr Berlusconi's People of Freedom party has been considering a number of former actresses and television showgirls as possible candidates in the June European elections, media reports say.
As party leader, he has a powerful voice in who makes the list.
‘What's happening today (in Italy) behind a front of bodily curves and female beauty is grave,’ Ms Lario said in an e-mail to ANSA last week.
‘Some have written that it is all part of entertainment for the emperor. I agree,’ she added.
‘What is emerging from newspapers is shamelessly trashy, all in the name of power.’
Supporters of Berlusconi have criticised Ms Lario, a former actress herself, for the latest public clash with her husband. Berlusconi is Italy's second-richest man with a fortune of $6.5bn, according to Forbes magazine.
