BERLUSCONI STIRS CONTROVERSY WITH JOKES

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BERLUSCONI STIRS CONTROVERSY WITH JOKES
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BERLUSCONI STIRS CONTROVERSY WITH JOKES

BERLUSCONI STIRS CONTROVERSY WITH JOKES

(ANSA) - Rome, October 1 - Premier Silvio Berlusconi's penchant for telling jokes stirred up a hornet's nest on Friday, with the opposition and Jewish groups blasting him for anti-Semitism and defaming religion and women.

The premier was caught making quips and telling jokes in a video filmed outside his Roman residence on September 29 and posted on the website of left-leaning daily La Repubblica.

Speaking to young supporters, the premier says:"A Jew tells a relative: at the time of the extermination camps, a fellow countryman asks our family to hide him and we do. We put him in the basement, take care of him and ask him to pay us on a daily basis.

The other fellow asks: how much was it?

Three thousand euros.

A month?

No, per day.

Wow!

We'll we're Jews..and he paid up because he had the money. So give me some peace.

But here's a question for you: do you think we should tell him that Hitler has died and the war is over?"

Berlusconi wraps up his story by asking supporters: "cute, eh?".

The premier is also heard telling them that he "collects a story and a girl a day" and urging them to queue up so that when he next presents an electoral list "half of them will be women and all of them young".

"I'm more than enough to represent old people in the party, everyone else should be young".

In another video, filmed ahead of the Group of Eight (G8) summit which Italy hosted in the quake-hit city of L'Aquila, the premier tells a joke which targets Democratic Party Chairperson Rosy Bindi, the butt of his remarks several times in the past.

The 'story' takes aim at Bindi's looks and ends with a half-spoken blasphemous word.

Berlusconi and the matronly Bindi first crossed swords in the looks department on a top TV talk show last December when, reacting to one of her arguments, he said: "I recognise you are increasingly more beautiful than you are intelligent."

Bindi replied: "I am not one of the women at your disposal, Prime Minister".

Berlusconi was embroiled in a series of sex scandals a year ago amid allegations he had also cast young, attractive women as candidates for office.

He recently said his playboy days were over and described himself as a "play old".

The jokes stirred up opposition charges of chauvinism, blasphemy and calls for his resignation.

PD leader Pier Luigi Bersani said he was "amazed that a person capable of such vulgarities should be running a country like ours".

Bindi stressed that "this time, before apologising to me he should apologise to Catholics and the Church".

According to the House Whip for the opposition Italy of Values (IdV) party, Massimo Donadi, Berlusconi, who turned 74 on Wednesday, is "clearly affected by senile misogyny".

Amos Luzzatto, President of the Jewish Community in Venice and former head of the Jewish Community in Italy, blasted the joke as "the worst sort of anti-Semite stereotype".

Berlusconi rebuffed critics saying he had only repeated a joke circulating among parliamentarians over a year ago, offering apologies but saying that too much had been made of the incident.