Silvio Berlusconi did yesterday what beleaguered leaders have done down the ages. Facing an onslaught of revelations about his private life, the Italian leader fought back by recasting himself as an international statesman.

With a week to go before he hosts the G8 summit of world leaders, the Prime Minister batted away questions about his connection to young women and instead tried to concentrate on the big issues facing the world today.

In an hour-long press conference Mr Berlusconi, one of the longest-serving Western leaders still in power, said that he was focused on issues of global importance such as climate change and reform of the world financial system — along with Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, on which he said that the question of sanctions against Tehran would be discussed.

The G5 nations — China, Brazil, Mexico, India and South Africa — and Egypt will also attend. The Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who made a controversial visit to Rome this month, will appear at the head of the African Union delegation.

Mr Berlusconi rejected allegations in the European press suggesting that his Government was unstable. In fact it was “the most stable in the Western world”. His party had won European and local elections decisively, and his current popularity was 62.3 per cent.

For his domestic audience he even had time for a slide show to demonstrate how he had resolved the Naples rubbish crisis last year.

He was backed by Giulio Tremonti, the Economy Minister, who has been mooted as a possible leader of a caretaker government if Mr Berlusconi falls. Mr Tremonti dismissed such talk, saying that any caretaker government would “last less time than the sell-by date on a pot of yoghurt”.

He said the European and local elections had shown that Mr Berlusconi had a strong majority and that he would govern to the end of his five-year mandate. He also rejected suggestions that Mr Berlusconi had been weakened by the Bari inquiry into alleged payments to women to attend his parties, saying that the prosecutors would do better to investigate the Sacra Corona Unita, the local Mafia.

If his performance was intended to reassure the public and world leaders, it was only partially successful.

Mr Berlusconi’s choice of a cruise ship, the Fantasia, moored in Naples harbour, was an odd location to stage his comeback. The ship, the pride of the MSC cruise line based in Genoa, would have been used to house G8 delegates had it been held at La Maddalena, the former naval base in Sardinia, as originally planned.

Instead, the location has been changed to the L’Aquila finance police barracks in Abruzzo, which has been the nerve centre of the post-earthquake reconstruction in central Italy.

La Maddelena was being modernised and revamped as the summit venue when Mr Berlusconi decided abruptly to move the meeting to L’Aquila after the April 6 earthquake as a gesture of solidarity with the victims.

President Napolitano called yesterday for a “truce” in the media on “controversies” in the run-up to the G8 summit. Despite Mr Berlusconi’s best efforts, however, the scandal surrounding his relations with young women refuses to die.

Manila Gorio, the transsexual talent scout, whose local television show in Bari has featured many of the showgirls who attended Mr Berlusconi’s parties in Rome and Sardinia, confirmed that Patrizia D’Addario, the escort who claimed to have spent US election night with Mr Berlusconi in November, had secretly made audio and video recordings, now with the police.

“We are like sisters,” Ms Gorio told La Stampa. “We know each other’s secrets.”

She said that Ms D’Addario had slept with Mr Berlusconi to put pressure on him — unsuccessfully — to help her to get planning permission for a bed and breakfast hotel.

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