Palace officials slammed the decision of the Irish Daily Star newspaper Saturday to print pictures of Prince William's wife Catherine sunbathing topless on vacation as driven only by greed.

The Irish Daily Star's move comes a day after the royal couple launched legal action against the French magazine Closer over the images, and as Italian magazine Chi says it will publish the photos on Monday.

"There can be no motivation for this action other than greed," a St. James's Palace spokeswoman said of the Irish tabloid's decision.

But editor Mike O'Kane told the BBC that outrage over the images was only felt in Britain and that readers in the Republic of Ireland wanted to know what all the "kerfuffle" was about.

He was "a little taken aback by the reaction in the UK," he said, saying the newspaper was treating Catherine no differently to any other celebrity.

"She's not the future queen of Ireland so really the only place this is causing fury seems to be in the UK," he said, suggesting that the British press were behaving with some hypocrisy.

O'Kane said the Irish Daily Star was reproducing the images as published in Closer on Friday rather than buying them itself directly. The pictures are not being published in the Northern Ireland edition.

The publication of the photos in the French Closer magazine, owned by the same parent company as Chi, the Mondadori Group, sparked an angry response from the royal couple and palace officials.

William and Catherine were said to be "hugely saddened" by what palace officials called a "grotesque" invasion of privacy while they were on a private vacation.

The latest controversy comes only three weeks after the British royal family was caught up in a media furor over images of William's younger brother, Prince Harry, partying naked in his Las Vegas hotel room with a group of girls.

In a sign of how divisive the issue of royal privacy has become, a co-owner of the Irish Daily Star, media group Northern & Shell, said it in no way backed the newspaper's decision to run the pictures of Catherine.

In a statement, the company -- which runs the Irish Daily Star in a joint venture with Independent News & Media, but does not exert editorial control over it -- said it was "profoundly dismayed" by the move.

"We abhor the decision of the Irish Daily Star to publish these intrusive pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, which we, like St James's Palace, believe to be a grotesque invasion of their privacy," Northern & Shell's communications director Mimi Turner said.

Northern & Shell also owns the Daily Express and the Daily Star, among other British publications, which have not run the pictures of Catherine, nor of Prince Harry.

William, who is second in line to the throne, and his wife are on an official tour of southeast Asian nations. They were in Borneo Saturday, where they escaped from the outside world on a rainforest trek.

They will travel on to the Solomon Islands Sunday on the next leg of a tour that has been overshadowed by the furor over the photographs.

Catherine was "upset" with Closer magazine, a palace source told CNN.

Mondadori told CNN it plans to run 26 pages of photographs of William and Kate on vacation in an "extraordinary" special edition to go on sale in Italy on Monday.

Chi's front cover will also feature three revealing pictures of Catherine, according to a copy of the page and statement sent by Mondadori spokeswoman Carmen Mugione via e-mail.

"It is a story worth publishing in an extraordinary edition because it shows in a natural light the everyday life of a very famous contemporary young couple in love," Chi's editor-in-chief, Alfonso Signorini, is quoted as saying in the statement.

"The fact that they happen to be the future king and queen of England certainly makes it more interesting and current, and in line with today's concept of monarchy."

A St. James's Palace spokeswoman said: "We will not be commenting on potential legal action concerning the alleged intended publication of the photos in Italy save to say that all proportionate responses will be kept under review.

"Any such publication would serve no purpose other than to cause further, entirely unjustifiable upset to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who were enjoying time alone together in the privacy of a relative's home."

The palace confirmed Friday that legal proceedings for breach of privacy had been launched in France by the couple against the publishers of Closer in France.

According to Mondadori's website, Closer has an average weekly circulation of about 414,000, while Chi sells more than 340,000 copies a week. Marina Berlusconi, daughter of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has been chairwoman of the media group since 2003.