Rome, 28 October (AKI) - The leader of the centre-left Italy of Values (IDV) opposition party and former prosecutor, Antonio Di Pietro, on Wednesday urged Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to resign. Di Pietro's call came after an appeals court ruled that British tax lawyer David Mills did take a bribe from the premier during the 1990s to give false testimony.

"In light of the sentence in the Mills case, we ask for the resignation of the president of the council of ministers," said Di Pietro in an interview with La7 commercial TV channel.

An anti-Berlusconi protest has been organised for 5 December, Di Pietro added.

"On December 5 we will also protest, as part of a vast movement organised on the Internet, to formally request the resignation of Berlusconi," said Di Pietro (photo).

In regard to Tuesday's ruling on the Mills case, Berlusconi blamed the verdict on "those Communist public prosecutors and judges."

An appeals court in the northern Italian city of Milan on Tuesday confirmed the four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for corruption handed to Mills by a lower court for accepting a 600,000 dollars bribe from Berlusconi in 1997.

The sentence, however, is likely to make the premier's defence case harder. However, observers say it is unlikely Berlusconi will stand trial in the Mills case as the charges against him expire in 2011.