That Was Fast
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has resigned after only nine months in office. There is some possibility that he will be asked to form a new government. Parliaments can be very odd at times.
ROME - Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned Wednesday 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 aides did not rule out the possibility that President Giorgio Napolitano would ask Prodi to try to form a new government, and from first discussions among some allies, support for another Prodi government seemed to be building."We are ready to reconfirm our full faith in the Prodi government," said Dario Franceschini, a leader of the Olive Tree, the largest grouping in Prodi's coalition.
Napolitano's office said political consultations would begin Thursday on which leaders might have enough support to form a new government. In the meantime, it said, the president, who met with Prodi on Wednesday night, had asked him to stay on in a caretaker role.
The loss, by two votes in the Senate, came on a bid by Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema to rally the often bickering partners in the coalition, which range from Christian Democrats to Communists.
He was hoping to the allies would close ranks in the vote on foreign policy, including Italy's military mission in Afghanistan, but his bid backfired.
The proximate cause of the entire thing was the hard left's refusal to back deployment of Italian troops in Afghanistan. (Which is very, very likely the next step in this country if the left forces troops out of Iraq.)
World news | Gaius Wednesday, 21 February , 2007
By Bleepless, Wednesday, 21 February , 2007 @ 10:04 pm
According to the Mitrokhin archive, Prodi was a KGB agent.