Rome:
A Milan judge on Tuesday ordered Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to stand trial in April on charges of paying an underage nightclub dancer for sex and abusing his office to help release her from police custody when she was detained for theft.
The trial is expected to begin April 6, according to a statement released by the judge.
Mr. Berlusconi denies wrongdoing. After the ruling on Tuesday he did not appear at a scheduled news conference in Sicily, where Italy is seeking to stem a flow of more than 5,000 illegal immigrants from Tunisia.
Ever since prosecutors announced last week that they would call for an expedited trial, saying they had enough evidence to waive preliminary hearings, Mr. Berlusconi has fought back in the news media, accusing the judiciary of a "moral coup" against his leadership.
He said on Monday that he would not step down, and his center-right coalition, which governs with a narrow majority, has stood by him even as a growing number of Italians are tiring of his leadership. As the crisis wears on no one has ruled out early elections before his mandate ends in 2013.
The president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, who has the power to dissolve Parliament and call early elections, said on Tuesday that the growing showdown between the executive and the judiciary posed "reasons for anxiety," Italian news media reported.
On Sunday thousands took to the streets in Italian cities and worldwide in coordinated demonstrations that organizers said were aimed at restoring the dignity of Italian women amid the latest sex scandal and after years in which Mr. Berlusconi has routinely appointed television showgirls to political office.
The judge's ruling came weeks after prosecutors said they were investigating the prime minister on charges that he paid Karima El Mahroug, a nightclub dancer nicknamed Ruby Heart-Stealer, for sex before she turned 18 and abused his office in calling the police to intervene when she was detained in May for theft.
Mr. Berlusconi has said he called the police to avoid "an international diplomatic incident" because he had been told that the Moroccan-born Ms. Mahroug was the niece of Hosni Mubarak, then the president of Egypt.
The age of consent is 14 in Italy and prostitution is legal, but not with someone under the age of 18.
Both Mr. Berlusconi and Ms. Mahroug say they did not have sex, although Ms. Mahroug said the prime minister gave her 7,000 Euros the first time she came to his villa for a party last spring. In a television interview last month she said she had made up "a parallel life," telling people she was Egyptian, not Moroccan, although she did not reveal whether she had ever claimed to be Mr. Mubarak's niece.
The trial would not be Mr. Berlusconi's first. Over the years he has emerged largely unscathed from a dizzying list of legal troubles, including charges of corruption, tax evasion and bribing judges. In each case he was either acquitted on appeal or the statute of limitations ran out.
In the new trial Mr. Berlusconi would not have to appear in court but could do so if he chose.
Piero Longo, a lawyer for Mr. Berlusconi, said in a television interview on Tuesday that the judge's decision was "exactly what we expected." Noting that Mr. Berlusconi would be tried before a panel of three women judges, he said: "Great. Women are always appreciated, sometimes even agreeable," the center-left daily La Repubblica reported.