Italy looks for way out of crisis

Italy's president consulted with minor parties yesterday in an effort to resolve a political crisis, with politicians divided between favouring snap elections or an interim government to enact reforms.

Former Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, whose withdrawal from the coalition led to the collapse of Romano Prodi's government, was one of the first to meet President Giorgio Napolitano at the presidential palace.

"We want early elections in order to start a new phase," Mastella said afterwards. The president began consultations on Friday evening and will be holding talks with a long list of party leaders and former presidents until Tuesday evening.

Napolitano hopes to find a candidate to head an interim government charged with enacting changes to current electoral laws seen as a cause of political instability.

The 82-year-old former communist is known to oppose holding snap polls under the same messy electoral system which saddled Prodi with a razor-thin Senate majority.

The centre-left, which has been left in tatters by Prodi's demise, opposes early elections and has the backing of unions and industrialists, who favour electoral reform first.

"Early elections would be totally irresponsible," said Walter Veltroni, Rome mayor and leader of the Democratic Party, the largest in the left.

But the centre-right opposition, led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, is smelling blood and wants to return to power after losing elections to Prodi in 2006.

At a huge rally on Friday night in Naples that effectively kicked off his political campaign, Berlusconi insisted that the centre-right wanted to go directly to elections. "There is no reason to waste any more time, we must go to the polls as quickly as possible. This is the start of our election campaign for freedom," Italy's richest man told the crowd.

Il Giornale, a Milan newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family, ran a banner headline yesterday reading: 'No tricks. Let's go vote".