London, July 24 - The editor of a leading Italian newspaper dubbed 'subversive' by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has defended its series of exposures about alleged sex scandals involving the Italian leader, saying it had become a political issue.

'You can imagine in your country, what would happened if [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown met some escorts in his house and one of those escorts used a tape recorder and took pictures,' Ezio Mauro, Editor of La Repubblica, told The Times in an interview published Friday.

'This is an embarrassing situation but the embarrassment is not private, it is political,' said Mauro.

'It was Berlusconi who chose this story, not our newspaper.