Silvio Berlusconi today said he would not resign even if he was convicted of corruption as a new trial date was set for later this month.
The Italian Prime Minister, 73, now faces two trials following the loss of his immunity from prosecution.
Last month the Constitutional Court overturned a law which Mr Berlusconi pushed through Parliament shortly after being elected last year giving him immunity as long as he held high office. The Court said this infringed the principle that all Italians are equal before the law.
In the first trial to be resumed Mr Berlusconi will be accused in Milan on 16 November of tax fraud and false accounting over the acquisition of TV film rights by Mediaset, his media company. Milan prosecutors say Mediaset bought the rights at an inflated price from two offshore companies controlled by Mr Berlusconi.
Today judicial sources said a second trial would start shortly afterwards, on 27 November. In that case Mr Berlusconi is charged with paying a $600,000 bribe to the British tax lawyer David Mills, estranged husband of Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, to withhold evidence in court on Mr Berlusconi's behalf in corruption trials in the 1990s.
Last week the Milan appeals court upheld a four and a half year sentence against Mr Mills for accepting the bribe from Mr Berlusconi. The Court of Cassation, Italy's highest appeals court, has until April 2010 under Italy's statute of limitations to decide whether to convict Mr Mills definitively or acquit him. In Mr Berlusconi's case this time limit is extended until 2011 because of the period during which the case against him was suspended because of the immunity law is taken into account.
In interviews with Bruno Vespa, a leading television presenter, for a forthcoming book Mr Berlusconi repeated his frequent claim that the prosecutions brought against him were politically motivated and that he has "the support of the people". Extracts from the book were published today in the Italian press.
"I still have faith in the existence of serious magistrates who hand down serious verdicts, based on facts," he said. "If there were a conviction in trials like these, we would be facing such a big subversion of the truth that I would feel even more duty bound to stay in my post to defend democracy and the rule of law."
Mr Berlusconi, who has scarlet fever and has not been seen in public for two weeks, last week phoned a television discussion show from his sickbed to launch a ten minute diatribe against "Communist" magistrates and judges as well as the "left wing" press. After the Constitutional Court ruling last month he claimed he was "the person the most persecuted by the judiciary in all history."
Mr Berlusconi has also been dogged by sex scandals since May when Veronica Lario, his wife, demanded a divorce, saying she could not "stay with a man who frequents under age girls". She also said he needed help for "sex addiction" and had offered political posts to television showgirls. Magistrates in Bari are investigating claims that showgirls and "escorts" were paid to attend Mr Berlusconi's parties in Rome and Sardinia.
Supporters of Mr Berlusconi, including il Giornale, owned by Mr Berlusconi's brother Paolo, family, have said that the resignation last week of Piero Marrazzo, the centre Left governor of Lazio region, over a scandal involving transsexual prostitutes is proof that the Left "does not have the moral high ground" in criticising Mr Berlusconi's private life.
The Left points out that however Mr Marrazzo was not Prime Minister and that, whereas he took the "honourable course" and stepped down, Mr Berlusconi has refused to do so despite being accused of having spent the night of the US Presidential election a year ago with a prostitute.
Italian press reports said aides to Mr Berlusconi had sought to "get him off the hook" over the impending trials by introducing a Parliamentary measure amending the statute of limitations to shorten still further the time allowed for a conviction and appeal in corruption cases.
The measure had been included in a package of EU directives due to be "nodded through" in Parliament, reports said. This however had been blocked by deputies and senators in Mr Berlusconi's own coalition who noticed the clause and objected that it had "nothing to do with Europe".
Cracks have begun to appear in the coalition, with Giulio Tremonti, the Finance Minister, and Gianfranco Fini, the Speaker of the Lower House and co-founder of the ruling People of Liberty party, tipped as successors if Mr Berlusconi falls.
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