Milan  - Political leader Silvio Berlusconi has said he regrets having to step down as president of AC Milan when he begins his third mandate as Italy's prime minister.

"Unfortunately now I'll have to give up the presidency of Milan," Berlusconi told Italian radio. "I think it is incompatible (with the prime minister post)."

Berlusconi, 71, is likely to leave the position to current vice president Adriano Galliani, who filled in already during his last tenure as premier from 2001 to 2006.

Under Berlusconi's 22-year tenure, Milan won seven Serie A scudetti and five of their seven European titles. Their last successes were the Champions League and the Club World Cup in 2007.

After winning Italy's general elections on April 14 at the helm of a centre-right coalition, Berlusconi is forming a new cabinet that, he said, will have no minister of sport, which was part of the previous centre-left government.

"As regards sport," he said, "there is a fundamental principle, which I have always followed: the total and absolute independence of sport.

"Sport has its bodies, which must govern it democratically through the people elected from the protagonists of sport itself." (dpa)