Brown 'wants to stay friends with Rihanna'

Chris Brown has admitted that he hopes to remain friends with ex-girlfriend Rihanna after pleading guilty to assaulting her in February.

The 'Forever' singer was sentenced to five years' probation, 180 hours of community labour and ordered to attend a domestic violence course after the altercation just before the Grammy Awards.

Speaking on CNN's Larry King Live, he said: "I'm pretty sure we can always be friends, and I don't know about our relationship, but I just - I know definitely that we ended as friends."

When asked how he would feel if Rihanna began dating another man, he replied: "I'd definitely be affected by it. But at the end of the day, we aren't together. If she's happy, I'm cool."

The 20-year-old went on to say that he and Rihanna had tried to work out their relationship during a vacation in Miami shortly after the incident happened.

"It was sort of like a Romeo and Juliet story, like both sides not wanting us to kind of have contact, so we just got away and just wanted to - and that's the main reason I was [photographed] on a Jet Ski," he said.

"I know I got a lot of flak from that, and other people were like, 'Well, why is [he] on a Jet Ski? Why is he just acting like there's no care in the world?' Because I was rekindling my relationship with my friend."

> Brown: 'I remember what happened to Rihanna'