Italian police overpowered an intruder outside Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's hospital room today in a new security scare after he was attacked at the weekend.
The 26-year-old man was detained on the seventh floor of the Milan hospital where Berlusconi, 73, is recovering from a broken nose and facial cuts suffered on Sunday, police told AFP.
"He was coming out of the lift when bodyguards and police immobilised him immediately," a spokesman said.
The intruder "said he wanted to talk to the prime minister," the spokesman said. "He did not have an aggressive attitude or any weapon or dangerous object on him."
In his car, however, police found two kitchen knives and some hockey sticks, the spokesman added.
Police said the man had been treated for mental health troubles. They earlier said that Massimo Tartaglia, who faces assault charges after Sunday's attack, also had longstanding psychiatric troubles.
The 42-year-old faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
Berlusconi is recovering after Tartaglia hurled a souvenir model of Milan's cathedral into his face.
The prime minister's personal doctor Alberto Zangrillo examined him Wednesday to decide whether he can leave hospital as planned. Berlusconi has complained of neck pains disturbing his sleep.
Berlusconi spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti said "the persistence of the pains worry us a bit because the cervical pains (from a pre-existing condition) have gotten worse."
Doctors told Berlusconi to avoid stressful public duties, and he has called off a trip to the Copenhagen climate summit this week and a Christmas Eve trip to L'Aquila, the Italian city where nearly 300 died in an earthquake in April.
Bonauiti said a traditional end-of-year news conference may be rescheduled.
"The prime minister is like a volcano that begins erupting at seven in the morning," Bonauiti said. "He is a great worker and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to keep him away from work and his commitments."
Zangrillo said, however, that the prime minister must "abstain from all activities that would expose him to public situations, to stress."
Tartaglia has apologised to the prime minister for what he called a "cowardly" act.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni on Wednesday said "even a law could not prevent Berlusconi from doing what is in his nature," seeking contact with ordinary people in public.
"There are situations... that are dangerous, but it's important for him and his bodyguards to be aware of it," Maroni said.
The attack sparked acrimony within Italy's political class.
Fabrizio Cicchitto, a member of Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom party, accused left-leaning media of "almost wanting to transform (political) confrontation into a civil war."
Anti-corruption politician Antonio Di Pietro accused Berlusconi of encouraging a climate of "violence" through verbal attacks on perceived enemies.
The head of a vast media empire, Berlusconi has targeted prosecutors seeking his conviction on corruption charges, as well the Constitutional Court, which threw out an immunity law that protected him from prosecution while in office.
Last month after a Mafia turncoat alleged he had links with organised crime in the early 1990s, Berlusconi threatened to "strangle the authors of fiction about the Mafia."
Berlusconi, now in his third term as prime minister, is fighting mounting domestic troubles. Allegations about dalliances with other women led his wife Veronica Lario to file for divorce.