They claim to have evidence to show that the payment, made in 1997 by Berlusconi's family firm Fininvest, served to presuade the lawyer to give false evidence.

Berlusconi and Mills both deny the allegations of bribery.

The case has also attracted international attention because Mills is the estranged husband of British Culture and Sports Minister Tessa Jowell.

The latest accusation against Berlusconi, that of bribing a witness, is linked to an inquiry opened in 2003 into possible tax evasion and misappropriation in a sale of film and television rights to the United States.

Prosecutors investigating the allegations suspect legal fees may have been inflated artificially, using intermediary organisations, to evade tax.

Following initial hearings, which could take several months to complete, judge Paparella will decide whether the prosecutor's office should proceed with his case.

Earlier this year Italy's former prime minister accused politically motivated magistrates of "plotting" against him and claimed the timing of the prosecution's moves was designed to influence the electorate ahead of the polls held in April.

"It's absurd that while I work day and night there are public officials plotting against the prime minister. It's an infamy," he said.

However, prosecutors denied timing the case to coincide with the election campaign, which Berlusconi's centre-right coalition lost, saying they feared the case would lapse under Italy's statute of limitations if the charges were not brought now.

Berlusconi has already faced trial on eight occasions and been found guilty three times, in 1997 and 1998, on charges of corruption, fraud and illegally financing political parties, but the verdicts were either overturned on appeal or became void because of time limits on prosecution.

"We want an apology from the police and from the Justice Ministry, and we want our servers back," Andersson said.

He said the site is now mirrored on other sites around the world.

"It will be much stronger now. If police shut down a site, these other sites will be there to keep Pirate Bay working."

The Pirate Bay, started in early 2004, has 10 million to 15 million users each day, Andersson said.

He said the people running The Pirate Bay were not responsible for a hacker attack that shut down the Web site of Sweden's national police on Thursday, but added there many Swedish file sharers probably were angry about the crackdown.

Police spokesman Lars Lindahl said Friday it was not clear who attacked the police site, which was running again Saturday.

The music, movie and software industries say pirated works cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales each year.

The boy was just yards from his home when he was fired upon shortly before midnight on Saturday evening. His 13-year-old friend, from Longsight, who was also hit, is in a stable condition and being treated for a wound in his left leg.

Armed police were guarding the hospital where the two boys were being treated. The pair are among the youngest victims of gang-related violence in Britain.

They had been playing with friends on a grassy pedestrian strip that links Billing Avenue to another street in Ardwick Green. A silver car carrying five men drove up beside the group and one of the gang, wearing a balaclava, stepped out of the car and fired several shots at the group.

The boys were both bleeding heavily when the ambulance reached the scene shortly afterwards.

Greater Manchester police Superintendent Gerry McGowan said that detectives were still trying to find a motive for the attack.

"We cannot say what was the motive and early indications are that this is not a random attack, although we cannot say whether the youths who were hit were the intended targets," he said.

Police were unable to confirm the type of weapon used and said no firearms had been recovered from the scene of the shootings.

They have appealed for information from the public as they try to further piece together information regarding the men in the silver car. The gunman is described as about 6ft tall with a muscular build and wearing dark clothing.

There were at least two witnesses to the attack.

Bicycles belonging to the teenagers that were left as they fled, remained strewn across the cordoned off area of the road yesterday as forensic scientists carried out investigations.

House to house inquiries were also being conducted and a section of road was being examined.

Ardwick is just east of the Moss Side district of Manchester where there was much gang warfare in the 1980s and 1990s. Huge factories which once made the area prosperous have mostly closed down, leaving many in the town unemployed.

"The motherland and people will never forget their (the victims') heroic names and merits," Hu said.

"They have made important contributions to national defense and the modernization of the army."

China's mainland press, which are strictly controlled by the central government, only reports authorized information about military accidents, so very little extra information about the latest crash was officially released.

Nevertheless, some details began to emerge from locals at the scene and the media in the southern territory of Hong Kong.

The crash occurred around 3:00 pm (0700GMT) Saturday near Yao village in Anhui's Baidian county, with the wreckage of the plane strewn across a bamboo-covered hill.

"We heard a loud bang," said a post office worker at Baidian, who refused to give his name. "Many police officials rushed to the scene and sealed off the area."

Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper reported there were rainstroms in the area on the day but they had cleared by the time of the crash.

The paper quoted an eye witness who lives nearby as saying that the plane was flying near a hill when it exploded in mid-air. The plane parts were scattered across the hill, it said.

Another eye witness surnamed Zhou told Ming Pao the bodies and body parts of soldiers in camouflage uniform were scattered across the hill, with three bodies still attached to their parachutes.

Baidian's township government and police refused to comment Monday.

Chinese state press reported that Hu had ordered an investigation into the crash.

The investigation is headed by the vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, General Guo Boxiong, who had flown to the site.

The accident is believed to be one of the worst for China's military in recent years in terms of lives lost.

Seventy officers and sailors were killed in a submarine accident during a training exercise off the coast of eastern Shandong province in the Bohai sea in 2003.

A Chinese military plane crashed on the southern island province of Hainan in April, killing at least one pilot, amid a blackout in the state-run press about the incident.

One man was beaten in the face with a rock when he was set upon by a mob as he was cycling to his home. His jaw was severly swollen and his shirt spattered with blood.

"They asked me 'where do you come from?'" Paulino Bianco said, as he was treated by an Australian medic. "When I told them, they attacked me."

An estimated 100,000 people have fled their homes to makeshift refugee camps to escape the violence, which has heightened tensions between Timorese from the east and west of the country and raised fears of civil war.

The violence began two months ago after Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri sacked 600 of the country's 1,400-strong army after they went on strike to protest what they said was discrimination against those from the west of the country.

Westerners are generally seen as more pro-Indonesia, a sensitive issue in a country that fought a long and bloody guerrilla campaign, led by current President Xanana Gusmao, to win independence from its much larger neighbour.

Alkatiri has been blamed for much of the chaos but has resisted calls to resign, and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on Sunday warned against moves to try to topple him.

"If he were just forced to resign somehow, especially by outside forces, my estimation is that that would just destabilise the country still further," said Downer, who held crisis talks with the Timorese ladership in Dili on Saturday.

Asked about reports that Gusmao had wept during their talks, Downer replied: "Well, it was very emotional ... Here we have him watching ... what he perceives to be the failure of an independent East Timor."

Australia is leading an international force of around 2,250 troops trying to restore order to the country. Their commander, Brigadier Mick Slater, said the level of violence was steady and that more police were needed.

"If we look at the number of lootings and burnings and gang fights, the numbers are not going up," Slater said.

"What we need are police who know how to do policing activity to get these people off the streets and lock them up until we get them before a judge and let the judge take care of them."

Australia has called for the United Nations, which reduced its presence here following the nation's full independence from Indonesia in 2002, to take a greater role in the country.

Foreign and Defence Minister Jose Ramos Horta was to meet later in the day with Major Alfredo Reinado, the commander of the rebel breakway soldiers who were sacked by Alkatiri.

The first aid flights since the crisis began started touching down on Monday, bringing tents, tarpaulins and jerry-cans for those who have taken refuge in the camps.

The UN World Food Programme also began distributing rice, sugar and other essential goods.

Ariane Rummery, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said her agency was in contact with the international force over concerns about the camps, including worries that the violence on the streets could spread to them.

"We're trying to relieve the congestion in the camps, they're just too crowded. "People are living cheek to jowl," she told AFP.

"These conditions just exacerbate tensions and hopefully we can relieve them with these supplies."

With more than three-quarters of the votes counted, Mr Garcia has the backing of 55.5% of the electorate compared with Mr Humala's 44.5%.

Mr Garcia's margin of victory is expected to narrow as results arrive from more remote areas, where Mr Humala is the more popular candidate. But the head of the electoral agency, Magdalena Chu, said Mr Garcia's lead was virtually insurmountable and polling companies are predicting he will win with a 52% majority.

The country is still deeply divided by class and ethnic resentments and Mr Garcia acknowledged that one of his main challenges would be to get rid of government corruption.

Speaking to thousands of supporters last night outside the headquarters of his party, the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, he said: "I want our party, this time, to demonstrate to the Peruvian people, who have called it to the highest responsibility, that it will not convert the state into booty."

There was widespread corruption when Mr Garcia was last in power, with ten of thousands of party members gaining state jobs. "We must think this night of all of our past errors, about all of our defects and make an act of contrition," he said.

Peru's economy would only grow through trade and investment, he added, while also pledging to protect farmers from the effects of a free-trade agreement with the US and to give economic aid to small businesses.

Mr Garcia has won the majority of the votes in the capital, Lima, where a third of Peru's population of 16 million live. But he lost badly in southern and central highland states and the interior; regions populated by poor Quechua-speaking Indians who have long been neglected by the political elite.

Mr Humala came to prominence when he led a small military rebellion against the former president Alberto Fujimori's foundering corrupt regime in 2000. He has said that he is going to abolish corrupt policies that have left millions in poverty, but some are concerned about whether he is fully committed to democracy.

Others are concerned that he wants to imitate Mr Chavez who has espoused a strongly socialist policy and recently renationalised Venezuela's energy supply.

Mr Humala's party won the largest voting bloc in Peru's 120-member Congress in the elections on April 9. It has 45 seats, while Mr Garcia's party holds 36.