Under-fire Berlusconi insists Italians like him the way he is

PRIME Minister Silvio Berlusconi, facing a public divorce and a raft of sex scandals, has insisted he would not change and claimed Italians wanted him as he was.

“I am like that and I will not change. People want me the way I am. And Italians want me, I have 61% support [in polls],” he told a news conference.

“They want me because I am good, generous, sincere, loyal and I carry out my promises.”

The 72-year-old billionaire is embroiled in a host of scandals from his links to an aspiring teen model, raunchy parties at his private mansion and claims that he paid money for sex, an allegation he has denied.

“I cannot see what else they will invent, everything will be denied,” he said.

A call girl, Patrizia D’Addario, told the leading daily Corriere della Sera last week that she had gone twice to Berlusconi’s Rome residence on the promise of earning €2,000 for each visit.

Investigators in Bari have interviewed D’Addario and three other young women who claim to have been paid to take part in a party at one of Berlusconi’s homes, Italian media have reported.

D’Addario has reportedly claimed that she spent a night at Berlusconi’s home and filmed his bedroom with her mobile phone as well as the bedside table with a framed photograph of Berlusconi’s wife.

“I have never once thought of asking my guests not to bring their cellphones,” he said.

Berlusconi this week denied ever having paid money for sex.

“I have never seen the satisfaction that there could be in it without the pleasure of conquest,” he told the celebrity weekly Chi.

“Someone gave a very precise and extremely well paid mission to this Ms D’Addario.”

Asked whether he was aware that D’Addario worked as an elite escort, he replied: “If I suspected someone of such a thing, I would keep her thousands of kilometres away.”

It was Berlusconi’s first specific comment on the probe, having earlier dismissed the scandal as “rubbish”.

D’Addario has denied being party to a “well paid mission” – in other words, that she was paid to make last week’s claims.

“I deny that this was the case,” she said.

“If Mr Berlusconi has the slightest proof backing his claims he must present them to legal authorities.

“If this is not the case, he should not be making such claims.”

Earlier this month, Italian authorities seized hundreds of photos taken at Berlusconi’s Sardinian villa. Some of the pictures were published in a Spanish paper and showed Berlusconi in his garden alongside topless women and a totally naked man.

Berlusconi is also under investigation for allegedly misusing his official plane to fly personal guests, including a flamenco dancer and a well-known singer, to his villa.

Analysts said his news conference was a bid to divert attention away from the scandal.

“He was talking about what plans he has for 2010; he clearly intends to ignore everything, waiting for it to blow over,” said Raffaele De Mucci, a professor of political science at Luiss University, Rome.