ITALY'S prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi has launched an all-out attack on Italian and international media which have reported his involvement in sex scandals and questioned its implications.

His lawyer said he had served writs on newspapers and magazines in at least two other European countries and was taking advice on the scope for libel actions in Britain. In Italy Berlusconi is seeking damages of one million euros from the Espresso group, whose flagship daily, La Repubblica, has spearheaded the campaign to get answers about his friendship with an aspiring teenage actress and his alleged involvement with self-acknowledged prostitutes.

A writ signed by the prime minister said 10 questions to which the paper has demanded responses for the past two months were “rhetorical and blatantly defamatory”. La Repubblica said that “for the first time in the history of Italian journalism the questions [posed by] a newspaper will end up in a civil court”.

Details of Berlusconi's media counter-blitz emerged on Friday as his already strained relationship with the Catholic church was buffeted by fresh storms. The Vatican announced at short notice that a dinner for Berlusconi and the Vatican's top official had been scrapped.

The announcement came after the billionaire politician's family newspaper, Il Giornale, launched an unparalleled attack on the Italian bishops' newspaper, Avvenire, accusing it of a “moralising campaign” against Berlusconi, and throwing a spotlight on the private life of the editor.

Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by Berlusconi's brother, Paolo, said that in 2004 the editor of Avvenire had plea-bargained his way out of a trial for menacing behaviour towards the wife of his homosexual lover.

— The Guardian, London