Silvio Berlusconi has denied he is suffering from health problems despite his appearance on returning to Rome this week after two weeks closeted at his mansion near Milan with scarlet fever.

Mr Berlusconi looked puffy faced yesterday while attending ceremonies for Armed Forces Day alongside President Napolitano. He has regular cortisone injections for chronic neck pain caused - according to his own account - by cervical arthritis.

In his first response today to questions about his private life posed by La Repubblica, Mr Berlusconi said that despite the scarlet fever and neck pain he was in robust health.

He said that in 16 months in power he had attended 170 international meetings, 25 multilateral summits and 9 bilaterals, 80 press conferences and 66 Cabinet meetings, and had made 91 public speeches.

“Could I have done all that if I were ill?” he asked.

During the Prime Minister’s absence from Rome Paolo Bonaiuti, Mr Berlusconi’s spokesman, said speculation about his health was “completely without foundation. He is is in very good form”.

Italian journalists accredited to Parliament who normally follow the Prime Minister formally protested to his office today after they were stopped by police from covering his latest visit to L’Aquila to meet victims of the April earthquake in Abruzzo.

The journalists’ union said the reporters had been blocked on the orders of Roberto Gasparotti, Mr Berlusconi’s “image maker”. Reporters said they had been “manhandled” by police who demanded to see their documents. However televison cameras were allowed to record the L’Aquila event.

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