Berlusconi's coalition plunges into disarray

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's coalition government was plunged into disarray yesterday when a crisis meeting ended with one party demanding a confidence vote and another threatening to quit.

Mr Berlusconi had called the meeting in an effort to agree on a strategy to hold the coalition together after defeat in regional elections last week.

Union of Christian Democrats (UDC) leader Marco Follini, who called for a snap general election after the ballot box humiliation, declined to comment as he left the meeting, but a UDC source said the party was considering quitting the Cabinet.

Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, leader of the right-wing National Alliance (AN) party, challenged Mr Berlusconi to call a confidence vote in Parliament and listed his policy demands.

"I have asked Berlusconi to go to Parliament next week to say what he is actually going to do over the next year for the south (of Italy), to improve family incomes, to boost company competitiveness," Mr Fini said in a statement.

"If Berlusconi wants to change the odd minister fine, he has carte blanche, because the innovations the AN is calling for must be contained in policies not in ministries."

Mr Berlusconi has resisted calls for an early general election after his coalition lost 11 of 13 regional administrations in last week's polls, but his allies have asked for sweeping policy changes to improve the government's standing over the next year.

To placate them and avoid a poll he would find hard to win, Mr Berlusconi planned to come up with two new ministerial posts, one to take charge of development in the south and the other for urban areas, a political source said before the meeting. The only coalition party to pledge to support Mr Berlusconi, apart from his own Forza Italia (Go Italy), was the Northern League, which is keen to press ahead with a bill to devolve power away from Rome to regional governments.

The breakdown in coalition relations seemed to suggest the other parties did not get the policy changes they demanded.

Adding to tensions is the prospect that the position of Italy's president becomes vacant next year. Mr Berlusconi himself is thought to have ambitions for the office but has rivals in the other parties.

The coalition's squabbling will be good news for Romano Prodi, the former European Commission president who returned from Brussels at the end of last year to lead Italy's centre-left.