Gianfranco Fini, Mr Berlusconi’s main political rival and most likely successor, said after talks with the Prime Minister that a new measure would be introduced in parliament “within days”, cutting the statute of limitations in bribery cases from ten years to six.

Two trials are due to resume this month after a law granting Mr Berlusconi immunity from prosecution was overturned by the Constitutional Court.

The first relates to alleged tax fraud over the purchase of film rights by Mediaset, Mr Berlusconi’s television company. The charges currently expire in 2012.

Rescuers with sniffer dogs searched Friday for several people missing after the mud swamped entire villages and suburbs of Messina on the island’s eastern coast, Mayor Giuseppe Buzzanca said. Rescue efforts were hampered by the fact that many roads were impassable and the terrain still unstable with continuing rain.

Patrizia D’Addario – who at 42 is more than 30 years Mr Berlusconi’s junior – has already made what she claimed were tapes of their intimate pillow talk. But the potential political embarrassment she might cause on live TV had the government incandescent in the run-up to last night’s broadcast.

And she duly delivered by dismissing the Prime Minister’s claims that he was unaware that she was a call girl, in a live interview beamed from the southern city of Bari. “He knew – everyone at the parties knew,” she said in reference to the now infamous gatherings the media mogul premier hosted in Rome and Sardinia.

“I think everything has been put in place by the Mafia,” Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Northern League, said as he arrived at an event in Pian del Re in the north of the country. “We have introduced very tough laws against the Mafia.

“I already said to Berlusconi, ‘Look out because the Mafia is involved in that; the Mafia organises prostitution’. I am convinced that the Mafia organised this thing here.”

Mr Berlusconi admitted for the first time on Thursday that Giampaolo Tarantini, a businessman, had brought “beautiful women” to his parties but denied that he had ever paid for sex.

Alessandra Mussolini, who was also called a ‘bitch who wants to kill all the Romanians’, forced distributors to cancel screenings of Francesca after complaining.

The movie, about a Romanian woman who dreams of moving to Italy to open a nursery, was to be released next month following critical acclaim at the Venice Film Festival.

But Italian distributors Fandango have now agreed to delay its nationwide showing following a complaint by Ms Mussolini, 45, last week.

The mayor of Verona Flavio Tosi also launched legal action after a character in the film referred to him as the ‘s*** mayor’ of the northern city.

When The Times contacted Vladimir Putin’s office, a spokesman said that the Russian Prime Minister had never given the gift of a bed to Mr Berlusconi.

In the recorded conversation, the voice alleged to be Mr Berlusconi’s asks Patrizia D’Addario to meet him in the big bed, which she describes as the one with the curtains.

One theory is that Mr Putin spent a night in the bed while staying at Mr Berlusconi’s Rome residence.

President Obama joined Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister who hosted the meeting, in suggesting that the G8 was too small to cope with the problems facing the world and that other emerging countries needed to be included.

“To think we can somehow deal with some of these global challenges in the absence of major powers like China, India and Brazil seems to be wrong-headed,” Mr Obama told reporters shortly before leaving for Ghana on his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa as US President.