ITALY'S prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has admitted for the first time that women were brought to his home by a businessman who is under investigation for aiding and abetting prostitution. But he repeated that he had not paid them and declared that he was “by far the best prime minister Italy has had in its 150-year history”.

In extracts from a statement to police published on Wednesday, Giampaolo Tarantini, from the southern Italian city of Bari, said he had brought about 30 women to parties and dinners at Berlusconi's Rome palazzo and at least six had spent the night there. The affair took on a new dimension on Thursday when it emerged that some of the alleged encounters took place on days when the prime minister cancelled official appointments.

At a press conference with the visiting Spanish prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Berlusconi said “An entrepreneur from Bari, now well known, Tarantino or Tarantini, came to some dinners bringing with him beautiful women [and] introducing them as his friends, his acquaintances.”

— The Guardian, London