ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Silvio  Berlusconi did not have sex with a teenage girl at the centre of  a sex scandal that has wrecked Berlusconi’s marriage, the girl’s  ex-boyfriend said.  In a letter to Italy’s best-selling Corriere della Sera  newspaper, Luigi Flaminio apologised for having talked publicly  about Berlusconi’s relationship with aspiring model Noemi  Letizia.

“I only told the truth,” Flaminio said in the handwritten  letter printed by Corriere yesterday.

“Now they are insinuating that he [Berlusconi] had sexual  relations, something which I rule out a priori and is impossible  knowing Noemi and her values.”

He said his earlier remarks to the left-leaning La  Repubblica newspaper had been used to attack the 72-year-old  conservative leader, whom he called “a man of the people”.

Berlusconi’s relationship with the young woman came to light  when he was photographed at her 18th birthday party in Naples  last month, prompting his wife to demand a divorce and raising  an outcry from Italy’s opposition.

Berlusconi, still riding high in opinion polls and leading  his party’s campaign for next week’s European elections,  insisted he was a friend of Letizia’s family and denied any  “steamy affair”.

However, La Repubblica quoted Flaminio as saying the prime  minister had first telephoned Letizia after seeing her in a  modelling catalogue and had hosted her at his villa in Sardinia  when she was still a minor.

Letizia has repeatedly said she is a virgin.

Flaminio told La Repubblica that Berlusconi hosted Letizia  and dozens of other young women at his villa in Sardinia during  several days for a New Year’s Eve party. Flaminio said their  relationship ended shortly after she returned.

Berlusconi on Saturday won a legal appeal to prevent  publication of hundreds of photographs of visitors to his  Sardinian villa taken without his permission by a  photojournalist, including several snapped during the New Year’s  Eve party.

A prosecutor in Rome ordered the seizure of hundreds of the  reporter’s images. Opposition parties, however, said they would  table parliamentary questions after the photographer told  Italian media that he had taken images of Berlusconi’s guests  arriving on military planes.

“This vice of using state aircraft to fly to football  matches, Formula 1 races or parties at the seaside has got to  stop because it is known as embezzlement,” said Antonio di  Pietro, head of the opposition Italy of Values party, vowing to  raise the subject urgently in parliament.