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If this trial runs its expected course it will all be over in July

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If this trial runs its expected course it will all be over in July. Italy faces the appalling possibility of taking its turn at the head of the EU led by a convicted criminal.Mr Berlusconi has already moved Heaven and Earth to avoid this contingency. He spent months ramming a Bill through parliament that would enable him to get the case moved from Milan to Perugia, home to a kindlier set of judges.The Bill was passed, but Mr Berlusconi's claim of "legitimate suspicion of bias" was thrown out by Italy's highest court of appeal.Previti's conviction and stiff sentence proved that Milan means business So Mr Berlusconi can rant and rave outside the court. But at some level he must also deal with the court on its own terms. Hence yesterday's appearance.So many people wanted a glimpse of Mr Berlusconi in action that the judges were forced to move to a bigger courtroom. In the three years since the trial started, this was in fact the second time he had shown his face.

Once last month he stayed for five minutes but left without saying anything.Yesterday Mr Berlusconi told the packed, sweltering courtroom that he had joined the battle to buy a state-owned food conglomerate called SME at the request of Bettino Craxi, Prime Minister at the time and Mr Berlusconi's old friend and political patron, who later died in exile in Tunisia, convicted in absentia of corruption.Agreement on the firm's fate had already been reached between Romano Prodi, chief of the state company IRI, which owned SME, and another business mogul, Carlo De Benedetti. But Craxi told Mr Berlusconi that the price agreed was far too low."I had no direct interest," Mr Berlusconi told the court, "and Craxi begged me to intervene because he believed the operation was damaging to the state." Another motive for bidding for SME, he admitted, was that "I still had a score to settle with De Benedetti", who was an old rival of Mr Berlusconi. The offer by Mr Berlusconi and others to buy SME trumped Mr De Benedetti – thanks, it is alleged, to the bribing of Rome's judges. That is the substance of the charges Mr Berlusconi is facing. Yesterday he had nothing to say on the bribing of judges.Instead he turned the court's attention to Mr Prodi, the centre-left leader who trounced Mr Berlusconi in the general election of 1994, and who is now president of the European Commission. In court, without mentioning Mr Prodi by name, Mr Berlusconi said that the former economics professor did not have the authority to agree to the sale of SME to Mr De Benedetti. He also hinted at the possibility of bribery influencing the sale."I have come to learn," he said, "that two directors of IRI were indignant when they learnt of Mr De Benedetti's offer, at the moment when it was being signed." He had learnt, he said, that Mr De Benedetti had remarked: "I'm not here to make offers but to sign.

The two directors left their seats, leaving only De Benedetti and the president of IRI [Mr Prodi] to conclude the deal." One of Mr Berlusconi's lawyers submitted to the court a letter sent to Mr Berlusconi on 29 April by a businessman, Giovanni Fimiani, alleging what he describes as "the grave blame and responsibility of Professor Prodi, residing undisturbed in Brussels".Later Mr Prodi issued a statement saying the facts of the case showed his "constant concern to protect state interests, to defend the independence of public enterprise from any outside pressure". Mr Prodi has never been the subject of any corruption charges.A source in the centre-left opposition said on condition of anonymity that he was "astonished" at Mr Berlusconi's performance in court. "He's played no part in the trial at all even though he's one of the accused; today he didn't sit in the dock, he just said what was on his mind as if he were a neutral witness, as if he had just walked in from the street. I believe the speech is part of a personal strategy to radicalise and polarise political opinion in the country in the run-up to local elections at the end of May, trying to turn the election into a contest between himself and 'the communists', just as he did in the general election of 2001."Because, as often before in Mr Berlusconi's extraordinary past, he is in desperate trouble and on solid ground at the same time.

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