Berlusconi 'sure' to win election

Italy's opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi said he was "100 per cent" sure he would win a parliamentary election in four days' time and rejected any broad coalition with the centre left in the event of a draw.

But Mr Berlusconi also voiced concerns his opponents might use electoral fraud against him.

"I consider a draw unrealistic," a hoarse-voiced Silvio Berlusconi told RAI TV yesterday. "We have opinion polls which absolutely guarantee our victory."

Italian law bans opinion polls from two weeks before the April 13-14 vote, but the last ones published showed Mr Berlusconi, a 71-year-old media tycoon, 5-9 percentage points ahead of his opponent, former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni, aged 52.

In the final week of a lacklustre campaign the two sides have hardened polite rhetoric which had given the impression they would consider forming a coalition government.

"Whoever wins, even by one vote - this is my conviction which I want to underline once again - will have the duty and the honour of governing Italy," Mr Veltroni said. Mr Berlusconi also said he would not do a deal with the centre left.

Despite his strong poll lead, a voting system that assigns seats in the upper house on a region-by-region basis might give Mr Berlusconi a slender Senate majority, as happened to Mr Prodi whose fragile coalition collapsed 20 months into a five-year term.

Mr Berlusconi said he lost the 2006 election because of voter fraud, a charge which was never substantiated, and yesterday he suggested the same could happen this time.

"He (Veltroni) should promise me that the left will renounce the use of blank ballots ... the type of fraud that was around at the last election," he said, accusing left-wing election officials of counting abstentions as votes for the left.

Mr Veltroni rejected the accusation.

"He only talks about fraud when he loses. He needs to stop this as it's just a way of creating tension. Do you think Berlusconi is fit to govern?" he said on RAI TV.

Both candidates promise tax cuts as sweeteners to electors to stimulate a stagnating economy, but Silvio Berlusconi hopes to win swing voters bitter at tax increases brought in by Romano Prodi.

To underline his tax-cutting credentials, Il Giornale daily, owned by Mr Berlusconi's brother, ran the headline: "I have an idea for Italy: no tax for one month", although Mr Berlusconi admitted it was a nice idea rather than a realistic proposal.

"The idea would be to give to Italians, after all they suffered under Prodi, a month without taxes: 'the month of freedom'," Mr Berlusconi told the paper, putting his chances of victory at "100 per cent".

"We probably wouldn't be able to do it because it would cost too much, but as you can see we don't lack imagination for solving problems," the centre-right leader said.

Another electoral issue remains loss-making airline Alitalia which the Prodi government had aimed to sell to Air France-KLM.

With the sale in doubt after the Franco-Dutch airline withdrew from talks with unions last week, Mr Berlusconi reiterated his belief that local business would bid to keep it Italian.

"There is a very wide group of important businesses that will come forward as soon as this wretched negotiation is over. Alitalia will remain Italian and return to profit," he said.