Berlusconi's new government begins by bickering

Silvio Berlusconi seems to have forged only an uneasy peace among his warring coalition partners yesterday after the Italian Prime Minister named a new government to avoid a snap election he appeared likely to lose.

Italy swore in its new Cabinet late on Saturday after three days of crisis talks aimed at mending coalition relations frayed by a bruising regional election defeat on April 3 and 4.

With the horse-trading over, ministers from across the centre-right coalition headed to the newspapers to express what they really felt about each other. The picture they painted showed a far from united front.

"We continue to think this was a useless crisis that only ended up wasting a lot of time," the Northern League's Roberto Calderoli, who kept his seat as Reforms Minister, said in an interview with the newspaper Libero.

Mr Berlusconi was forced to step down last week by two allies who demanded radical strategy changes after the centre right's regional election defeat. Both parties, the National Alliance (AN) and the Union of Christian Democrats (UDC), returned to the government after winning assurances that it would address the problems of the south, where unemployment is at 16 per cent.

Opinion polls had predicted Mr Berlusconi would lose a snap election if it had been called ahead of next year's deadline.

A member of his Forza Italia (Go Italy) party, Giuliano Urbani, who lost his post as culture minister, said he was glad to be out of it.

"I'd had enough of this politicking, the wretched divisions, the cannibalism and foolishness," Mr Urbani told Corriere della Sera.

"How could they have opened a crisis, just a few months before the elections and after having governed for four years together?... What an own goal!"

The new Cabinet must now win a vote of confidence in parliament this week, but that should be a formality.