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Italian Porn Star Bids to Join Rome City Council

Retired Italian porn star Llona Staller, better known as "Cicciolina", on Thursday said she would run for Rome's city council -- 34 years after the blonde bombshell started out in politics.

The Hungarian-born 61-year-old said she would be running for the historic Italian Liberal Party and would campaign to legalize prostitution, cannabis for medicinal use and civil unions.

"My program will be liberal, libertarian and environmentalist," said Cicciolina, the former wife of U.S. artist Jeff Koons who immortalized the couple in a series of kitsch naked sculptures.

The ex-model first ran for parliament in the Green Party in 1979 before starting her porn career in 1983 with "The Red Telephone" -- a film she co-produced with porn impresario Riccardo Schicchi.

Cicciolina was elected to parliament in 1987.

She offered to have sex with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to prevent the Gulf War -- and renewed the offer in 2002 as the campaign to invade Iraq gathered force in Britain and the United States.

In 1991, she founded a party called the "Party of Love" with fellow Italian porn star Moana Pozzi -- which became a popular as a protest party amid a wave of political corruption scandals.

Critics say she is as an example of Italian politics as an international source of amusement, but Cicciolina's backers say she has been a pioneer of women's rights and liberal values.

Source: Agence France Presse


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