Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says his 19-year marriage is over, leaving Italy’s second-richest man facing a distracting divorce a month before European Parliamentary elections.

“I am worried and upset,” he said in an interview with newspaper La Stampa published today. “We have maintained a difficult situation together for the love of our children, but now it’s over.”

Berlusconi’s marital woes occupied the front pages of Italy’s top newspapers today. His remarks were in response to Veronica Lario Berlusconi announcing in a newspaper interview yesterday that she would seek a divorce. That announcement followed her April 28 letter to news agency Ansa publicly condemning his latest public flirtation with other women.

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Berlusconi will become the second European Union leader to divorce in office in the past two years. French President Nicolas Sarkozy divorced from his second wife Cecilia shortly after his election in 2007 and months later married Carla Bruni, an Italian model and singer.