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Italian PM Prodi resigns
22/02/2007 07:28 - (SA)
Rome - Italian President Giorgio Napolitano embarked on frenzied negotiations for a new government on Thursday after the shock resignation of Prime Minister Romano Prodi.
Prodi resigned on Wednesday after his centre-left coalition lost a senate vote on foreign policy, including Italy's military deployment in Afghanistan, forcing the president to scramble to save the situation in a drama reminiscent of Italian politics of the 1980s and 1990s, when governments sometimes changed every few weeks.
Prodi's administration had been forced onto the defensive over the deployment of 2 000 troops in an international force in Afghanistan and the enlargement of a US military base in northern Italy.
While both are policies most opposed by far-left parties within the ruling coalition, it was the conservative opposition which led calls for Prodi to go.
Right wing senators shouted "resign! resign!" after the result of the vote in the senate was announced.
Prodi should "tender his resignation immediately", declared conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi, who was forced out of the prime minister's office in April after narrowly losing an election to Prodi.
The government has a one seat majority in parliament and needed 160 votes in the senate debate to get a formal motion of support. But only 158 senators voted in favour and 136 opposed the government. Several left wing senators were reportedly absent from the upper chamber.
Crisis meeting
Though it was not a formal vote of confidence, foreign minister Massimo D'Alema said on Tuesday that the government would "go home" if it lost.
"It is a grave, serious and worrying fact not to obtain a majority for the speech of a foreign minister," acknowledged Vannino Chiti, the minister for relations with parliament.
Immediately after the vote, Prodi held a crisis meeting with D'Alema, defence minister Arturo Parisi and deputy prime minister Francesco Rutelli.
He then tendered his resignation to the president. Napolitano, who rushed back to Rome from a visit to the provinces, said in a statement that he "reserves his decision" on the future of the government.
The president was to start consultations on Thursday with Italian party leaders.
He can either name Prodi as prime minister again, choose a new government leader from the coalition, appoint a techocrat government or dissolve parliament and call new elections.
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