Lario speaks out on Berlusconi divorce

Veronica Lario, who is in the opening stages of divorce proceedings against Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, has broken her silence in a letter that has appeared on the front page of Corriere della Sera.

Lario, who Berlusconi (pictured above, in front of a picture of Lario) married in 1990, ten years after he saw her appear naked in a play in Milan, has complained how the allegations of Berlusconi's dalliances with teenage showgirls have tarnished her reputation.

Lario, 53, wrote that she "watched in silence without reacting in the media to the brutal besmirching of myself, my dignity and my marital history".

"What is certain is that the truth of the relationship between myself and my husband has not even been touched on, nor has the reason for which I had to turn to the press to communicate with him," she wrote. "It is also certain that I have always loved him, and that I have lived my life in the service of my marriage and my family."

The timing of the letter is a matter of intrigue. Some suspect that Lario spoke out to compromise Berlusconi's standing as an international statesman.

Currently hosting a high-profile state visit by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Berlusconi flies over to Washington to meet Barack Obama on Monday. Next month, he will host a G8 summit in Abruzzo, the region devastated by an earthquake last April.

The prospect of legal wrangling over his £4bn fortune doesn't seem to have dampened Berlusconi's sense of humour. After addressing an industry conference yesterday, he made a quip about Noemi Letizia, the 18-year-old whose birthday he controversially attended, and David Mills, who was convicted of accepting a bribe from Berlusconi to lie for him during a corruption trial in the 1990s.

"I'll leave you to your work," he said. "I need to rush off because I'm arranging a wedding between Noemi and - what's the name of that English lawyer? - ah yes, Mills. Naturally I will offer a free honeymoon on a government flight."