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Italy in crisis talks over PM
22/02/2007 13:48 - (SA)
Rome - Italian President Giorgio Napolitano went into crisis talks with political leaders on Thursday after the shock resignation of Prime Minister Romano Prodi because of a foreign policy defeat in the senate.
The prime minister, whose fragile centre-left coalition narrowly won elections last April, tendered his resignation after the vote on Wednesday centring on Italy's military deployment in Afghanistan.
Two communist senators in Prodi's coalition who are staunchly opposed to the deployment, as well as the planned enlargement of a US military base in northern Italy, tipped the balance with their crucial "no" votes.
Writing in the left-leaning daily La Repubblica, editor Ezio Mauro said the "two communist defections are a concrete sign of a hardline ideology, even ... at the risk of returning the country into the hands of (former prime minister Silvio) Berlusconi."
Napolitano was meeting first with senate speaker Franco Marini, to be followed by a meeting with Marini's counterpart in the lower house, Fausto Bertinotti of the far-left Refoundation Communist party.
The president was then expected to meet the heads of parliamentary groups.
The crisis, sparked by Prodi's resignation, is reminiscent of the 1980s and 1990s when Italian governments sometimes changed every few weeks.
Napolitano is widely expected to rename Prodi as prime minister. But he could choose a new government leader from the coalition, appoint a technocrat government or dissolve parliament and call new elections.
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