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Italian Premier Romano Prodi resigned yesterday after nine months in office following an embarrassing loss by his center-left government in the Senate on foreign policy, including Italy's military mission in Afghanistan.

 

Prodi handed in his resignation during a meeting with President Giorgio Napolitano.

 

According to media reports, the secretary-general of the president's office, Donato Marra, said Napolitano had "reserved his decision" on whether to accept the resignation pending consultations with political leaders.

 

Political analysts said the president could ask Prodi to verify whether his nine-month-old government holds a parliamentary majority by calling a confidence vote.

 

Napolitano could also formally accept Prodi's resignation if the outcome of their talks indicates that the government lacks parliamentary support.

 

The consultations will begin this morning, reports said.

 

A spokesman for the main parties in Prodi's nine-way coalition said the parties were ready to back the premier in a confidence vote.

 

The government failed to make the majority by two votes in the Senate yesterday, with 158 senators voting in favor of its foreign policy line, 136 against and 24 abstaining.

 

The ballot was not a confidence vote and there was no constitutional requirement for Prodi to resign.

 

But Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema had said in advance that the government should quit if it lost the vote as a "constitutional principle."

 

Chaos broke out in both chambers of parliament after the vote, with the Silvio Berlusconi-led opposition greeting the result with a chorus of "quit, quit, quit."

 

Berlusconi issued a statement saying "Prodi must resign immediately for reasons of political, constitutional and ethical consistency."

 

In recent days Prodi has upset pacifist and hard-leftist allies in his coalition by refusing to withdraw Italian troops from a peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, and approving the expansion of a US military base in the northern city of Vicenza.

 

The premier has a solid majority in the House but holds only one more seat than the opposition in the Senate, where the government had been expecting extra help from a handful of life senators.

 

But of the seven life senators, former president Francesco Cossiga voted against the government, two abstained including seven-time former premier Giulio Andreotti and another was absent for health reasons.

 

The premier was also dealt a blow when Senator Franco Turigliatto of the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), resigned in protest at the government's foreign policy just before the vote. Another leftist senator, Ferdinando Rossi, joined Turigliatto in abstaining, according to reports.

 

Given that abstentions in the Senate essentially count as negative votes, the actions of Rossi, Turigliatto and the two life senators were decisive.

 

The government has been forced in the past to resort to confidence votes to maintain coalition unity in the Senate on foreign policy issues.

 

(Xinhua News Agency February 22, 2007)