Berlusconi dismisses mafia ties accusations

Embattled Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday brushed off accusations of mafia ties.

BRUSSELS, December 11, 2009 (AFP) - Embattled Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday brushed off accusations of mafia ties and said he had no intention of quitting.

"I say clearly; I have never thought, not even for an instant, of calling early elections," he told reporters on the margins of an EU summit in Brussels.

"This government will complete its mandate as decided by Italian voters," he underlined.

He dismissed statements by a turncoat mobster who told an Italian court last week that a mafia boss had praised Berlusconi and boasted that the mob owed everything to political backers like him.

"This is what I have to say," intoned Berlusconi, who is embroiled in various legal problems, including suspicions of corruption and tax fraud. "This is all a farce."

Meanwhile a former top Mafia don cast doubts on the accusation that Berlusconi had tight links to the Cosa Nostra in the 1990s.

Filippo Graviano told a court in the Sicilian capital Palermo, by video link from jail, that he did not know the figure at the centre of the claims, former Berlusconi aide iMarcello Dell'Utri, "either directly or indirectly."

Graviano added that he "never asked anyone's help to solve problems."

Mafia attacks in Florence, Milan and Rome in 1993 that claimed 10 lives and injured about 50 were aimed at wreaking havoc and ushering in politicians who would be inclined to help the Cosa Nostra including jailed mafiosi, Spatuzza said.

Berlusconi won election in 1994 shortly after forming the centre-right Forza Italia party.

He began his third stint as prime minister in May 2008.