Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti has appealed to Italy's president to intervene after premier Silvio Berlusconi charged that three top RAI personalities should be fired because their use of state-run television has been "criminal."

"You are the custodian of the constitution, therefore the guarantor of the freedom of each one of us,'' Moretti wrote in a letter to president Ciampi, which was published in Italian newspapers on Sunday. "But what is left of freedom when the freedom of opinion and the freedom of information are threatened and attacked by the head of the government'''

Moretti, a leader of Italy's left-wing intelligentsia, was responding to comments made by Berlusconi at a press conference in Bulgaria when the premier said three RAI personalities - political talk show host Michele Santoro, veteran journalist Enzo Biagi and satirical comic Daniele Luttazzi - had "made a criminal use of public television." All three have been critical of the premier.

Asked if that meant the three should lose their jobs, he said, "If they change, I have nothing against them. But since they won't'" Under his government, Mr. Berlusconi said, state television "cannot be so seditious." Berlusconi said it would be necessary for the new heads of RAI to "not allow this to happen again.''

While Berlusconi's critics have long complained that his position as owner of Italy's leading private broadcaster, Mediaset, is incompatible with his position in government, the prime minister's recent comments have provoked criticism even from some of his staunchest defenders.

"Nothing can justify a witch hunt of journalists ordered with an authoritarian voice by the owner of Mediaset and the prime minister," said an editorial in Il Foglio, a right-wing paper co-owned by Berlusconi's wife.

Berlusconi later said his comments had been taken out of context. "I won't change a comma of what I said," he told reporters. "But the centre-right will guarantee that RAI will not be used as it was under previous management, to attack the representatives of the opposition right before the elections. "I don't want to make any blacklist," he continued. "I just meant to say to the opposition: 'I will not do to you what you did to us.' "

Rai president Antonio Baldassarre said that Rai - whose directors are almost all political allies of Berlusconi - would "act autonomously from any outside influence."