Noemi

Patrizia

Barbara

Silvio Berlusconi says reports that women were paid to attend parties at his private residences in Rome and Sardinia are all "garbage" and that he will sweep it away like the garbage of Naples; he won't be undone, he adds, by the media and the judiciary. But it is a safe bet that any dreams he ever had of ending his career as President of the Italian Republic can now be tossed in the bin.

Although many Italians, particularly men, appear to admire Berlusconi's wealth and pleasure-oriented life-style, there is a limit even here to what people will accept in their leaders. Furthermore, on the eve of the G8 meeting to be held next month in earthquake-stricken L'Aquila, his image is being increasingly blackened by revelations regarding his private life wirh political leaders and pundits now asking themselves if scandal will not damage Italy's standing in international circles.

Following the saga of an unclear relationship between the Italian prime minister with a young Neapolitan woman named Noemi, a judicial inquiry in Bari in the Italian south is now examining allegations that women were paid to attend parties and perhaps more. Berlusconi himself is not under investigation, but a Bari man is being looked at for the possible charge of soliciting prostitution.

So far two Bari women have gone public with their experiences, one - a 23-year old beauty named Barbara - appears only to have attended parties. An older woman, Patrizia D'Addario, 42, who defines herself as an "escort", has told friends (and possibly investigators) she had sex with Berlusconi and has a tape with a voice, which she says is Berlsuconi's, saying "wait for me in the big bed". She says she was paid 2000 euros and her expenses for going to Rome and attending a party at Palazzo Grazioli, Berlusconi's massive Rome residence. Unlike the other women present, she says she spent the night and that she wasn't interested in the money but in running for local office in Bari (which he did) and getting help on an entrepreneurial project.

Let's be clear. Berlusconi and his wife, Veronica,  have been informally separated for years and there is no reason why the 72-year old premier should not have relationships with women, sexual or not. Furthermore, it is easy here in Italy where there appears to be no dirth of beautful women willing to do more or less anything to get in the papers or on TV.  But as Gianfranco Fini, another leader of the Berlusconi party, the PDL, said yesterday: "There is no risk of instability [for the government] but there is a progressive loss of confidence in Italy's leaders and institutions ».