Berlusconi clashes with Napolitano on right-to-die case

A right-to-die case that has split Italy turned into a political crisis for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi yesterday, when the country's President refused to sign his decree ordering doctors to keep a comatose woman alive.

The Vatican, which believes that stopping feeding the woman would be tantamount to euthanasia, sided with the government and criticised President Giorgio Napolitano in a rare clash with the head of state of this mainly Catholic country.

Eluana Englaro, 38, has been in a coma since a car crash in 1992 and has been called "Italy's Terri Schiavo" - the American who spent 15 years in a vegetative state and was allowed to die in 2005 after a long court battle.

This week Ms Englaro's father, who has battled his way through Italy's courts for more than 10 years, took her to a new hospice that agreed to stop nutrition after several other clinics refused because they feared retaliation.

Italy's top court ruled last year that Ms Englaro should be allowed to die, confirming a previous ruling by a lower court that her coma was irreversible and that, before the accident, she had stated her preference to die rather than be kept alive artificially.

Doctors at the clinic began withdrawing food yesterday in line with that ruling.

But Mr Berlusconi's Cabinet quickly issued a decree barring doctors from stopping nutrition, effectively overruling the country's top judges.

Shortly after Mr Berlusconi issued the decree, President Napolitano, who had warned him not to use a decree law on such a delicate issue, told him he would not give it the signature needed for it to become law.

The centre-left opposition railed against Mr Berlusconi for clashing with the President. Even one of the Prime Minister's closest allies,Parliament Speaker and right-wing politician Gianfranco Fini, expressed deep concern over the standoff. Mr Berlusconi said that if the President did not sign the decree he would quickly call an emergency session of Parliament - where he has a comfortable majority - to enact a law.

"As a father, I could never allow a decision that would inflict suffering on a person who is still alive," he said.

Many Catholic politicians have said that not feeding the woman amounts to euthanasia, which is illegal in Italy, and urged Mr Berlusconi to intervene.

A priest celebrated Mass for anti-euthanasia activists outside the hospice yesterday and a group of protesters put up banners reading "Berlusconi, save Eluana". Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department, said he was "deeply disappointed" by the decision of Napolitano, who is a former communist.

"It is disturbing to see that in the midst of all these political diatribes, a person is being killed," Cardinal Martino told Ansa news agency.