Berlusconi's wife seeks divorce

ROME (Agencies) - Less than a week after writing an open letter that criticized her husband for cavorting with much younger women, the second wife of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says she wants to file for divorce, Italian newspapers reported Sunday.
“I’d like to close the curtain on our married life,” Veronica Lario, 52, said in an interview with La Repubblica that was published Sunday. A secretary for Ms Lario confirmed the report.
“I have been forced to take this step, I don’t want to add anything else,” La Stampa newspaper quoted Lario as saying, adding she had already contacted a lawyer. La Repubblica daily and ANSA news agency also carried the report.
“This is a strictly personal matter. All matters like this one are private and painful, especially when they relate to family relationships. The prime minister at the moment has no statement to make.” Lario met Berlusconi in 1980, when she was a B-movie actress in Milan and he was a married, up-and-coming real-estate tycoon. They were wed in a civil ceremony in 1990 after having three children.
The news of the break-up came after a week of soap-opera. On Tuesday, Ms Lario complained to the ANSA news agency about reports that Berlusconi’s coalition planned to nominate a slate of attractive, young women for elections to the European Parliament.
Choosing candidates on the basis of their looks rather than of their political experience was “shamelessly trashy”, Lario said.
She also was incensed at news reports that Berlusconi had attended the 18th birthday party in Naples of Noemi Letizia, who has posed for magazines semi-nude and has said in interviews that she calls the prime minister “daddy”.
The Turin newspaper La Stampa quoted Ms Lario as saying on Sunday that she had to begin divorce proceedings: “I was forced to take this step.”
La Repubblica quoted Lario on Sunday saying that she had been contemplating divorce for years. Any divorce would inevitably cause inheritance squabbles between Berlsuconi’s two children from his first marriage and the three from his marriage with Lario over control of his vast real estate and media empire, valued in the billions.
A spokesman for Berlusconi’s office was not immediately available for comment.