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ROME - Italy's president holds crisis talks with political leaders on Thursday to see if Romano Prodi, who has resigned as prime minister after nine months in power, can still head a government.
Prodi, who won the narrowest election in Italy's post-war history last year, quit today after he was defeated in the Senate on foreign policy -- a constant source of friction in his nine-party, Catholics-to-communists coalition.
Under the constitution, President Giorgio Napolitano must find a way out of the impasse and hold consultations with party and parliamentary leaders as well as former presidents.
There are three main scenarios.
If Napolitano finds enough support for Prodi among centre-left parties, he could ask him to either form a new government or go to parliament with his present cabinet for a confidence vote. If he won that, he could remain in office.
If support for Prodi is not strong enough for him to carry on as prime minister, Napolitano could ask someone else, possibly Interior Minister Giuliano Amato, to form a caretaker government of experts with cross-party backing.
If no agreement is found on who should be prime minister, Napolitano would be forced to dissolve parliament and call early elections, even though this option appears unlikely for now.
Divided
Divided over the Afghan war and ties with the US military, Prodi's centre-left government was unable to secure enough votes for a parliamentary motion backing Rome's foreign policy.
There was no constitutional requirement for Prodi to step down. But Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema had said before the Senate vote that the government should resign if it did not command majority support on foreign policy.
The motion, a broadly worded declaration of support for foreign policy, received 158 votes in favor, below the necessary majority of 160 votes, and was followed by a chorus of opposition calls for the government to "quit, quit, quit".
Italy's ruling coalition has only a one-seat majority in the Senate but in the past had managed to muster support by calling confidence votes.
The defeat was the most serious setback for Prodi's nine-month-old coalition government, also deeply divided over a host of domestic issues ranging from the budget, pension reform and a bill giving legal recognition to gay and unwed couples.
Renato Schifani, Senate leader of the biggest opposition party, Forza Italia, held up a copy of Wednesday's La Stampa newspaper which had quoted D'Alema's warning to coalition pacifists who oppose Italy's military presence in Afghanistan.
"I have in my hand one of the most important newspapers in the country with a declaration by Foreign Minister D'Alema: 'Resignation if we have no majority'," Schifani said to cheers from allies.
"There is no majority any more ... There is no Prodi government any more. The Prodi government has fallen in this chamber."
D'alema or everyone?
Earlier a political source in the Catholics-to-communists ruling coalition said he expected Prodi to survive the ordeal but said D'Alema, who is also deputy prime minister, would likely resign as foreign minister.
Beyond Afghanistan, where Italy has 1,900 troops on a NATO-led mission, one of the most divisive issues has been a plan to expand a US military base in northern Italy.
Protests against the plan drew tens of thousands of Italians, including some senior coalition members, last weekend.
D'Alema said the government was compelled to allow the base expansion. "Revoking the authorization would have been a hostile act on our part against the United States," he said.
But one leftist senator announced he would resign rather than vote for D'Alema's motion. "I am against the war in Afghanistan and against the US base in Vicenza," said Franco Turigliatto, with the Communist Refoundation party.
Reactions:
Franco Pavoncello at Rome's John Cabot University:
"Once again, the radical left brought him down. Last time, we waited two years. This time we waited nine months. Things are getting shortened out."
"What might happen may very well be is that the president of the republic may ask Prodi to try for a Prodi II (government). But at that point, we might see some heads rolling -- like probably (Foreign Minister Massimo) D'Alema would not be part of the government."
James Walston, Professor Of Italian Politics at American University in Rome:
"It's a double surprise. One that they got the calculation wrong again on the number of votes they'd get. Prodi and D'Alema seemed to be prepared for a grand challenge and this morning it seemed they'd scrape through.
The second surprise is that Prodi resigned instantly and the president accepted it.
There will be an attempted reshuffle and a caretaker government now presumably.
Italy has been through unstable governments before, so it's not going to plunge into crisis. Since the centre-right has not prepared a successor for Berlusconi, they don't want to have an election tomorrow so I think there'll be some waiting and one of the possibilities is they'll change the electoral law."
Gianfranco Pasquino, political science professor at Bologna centre of John Hopkins University:
"The government was very weak in the Senate from a numerical point of view and from a political point of view, as it never had a majority on foreign policy issues. So this was inevitable.
Even if there is another Prodi government, it would be hanging by a thread and would not last long, as the reasons for tension abound: we have soldiers in Afghanistan and Lebanon, there is the bill on unwed couples, to name a few problems".
- REUTERS
