ITALY: Italy's president asked Silvio Berlusconi yesterday to form a new government, moving to end a politically bruising crisis which forced the media tycoon to resign as prime minister two days previously.
"The president just gave me the mandate to form a new government and I thank him," Mr Berlusconi told reporters moments after leaving the office of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Italy's 84-year-old head of state.
Mr Berlusconi said he would present a new cabinet team to parliament "at the start of next week" for a confidence vote which would put him back into power after a humiliating spell of political uncertainty.
The premier still has to finalise a share-out of ministerial posts that satisfies the sharply divided parties of his centre-right coalition. Backroom talks will come to a head at a meeting of party chiefs today.
If he succeeds, Mr Berlusconi will escape what has been a very real threat of a snap general election he looked sure to lose.
Mr Berlusconi was forced to step down by two coalition parties which demanded strategy changes after the centre right suffered a crushing defeat in regional elections earlier this month.
Both the rebel parties, the National Alliance and the Union of Christian Democrats, have agreed to return to the new cabinet but warned that it must be seen to do more for poorer voters, especially in the underdeveloped south.
Mr Berlusconi sought to reassure them. "At the centre of our efforts will be relaunching companies, defending the purchasing power of families and a plan of concrete initiatives for the south with the creation of new jobs," he told reporters.
He now has a year to improve his declining popularity before a general election due in 2006, five years after he swept to power promising Italians better government, lower taxes and greater prosperity.
But Italians have been disappointed by low economic growth, which has consistently come in below the EU average, something Mr Berlusconi has blamed on geo-political difficulties.
In the election that sparked the crisis, the centre-left opposition led by former European Commission president Romano Prodi won 12 out of 14 regional governments as voters punished Mr Berlusconi for the economy and Italy's involvement in Iraq. The defeat led the two coalition allies to demand he resign and form a new government as a way of demonstrating to a sceptical electorate he took their concerns seriously.
Under Italy's constitution, a prime minister is obliged to resign if he wants to make major cabinet changes. But with such little time left, it is doubtful how much Mr Berlusconi's House of Freedoms coalition can achieve, especially with low growth and a budget that Brussels says is already stretched beyond the EU's limit. Political sources have indicated the reshuffle may be aimed at low-level ministries and many political commentators say the effect of the turmoil - which has brought Italy's government to a halt - will be negligible in terms of policy changes. "It may be true that in the end the changes will be few and minor," said an editorial in Corriere della Sera.
The crisis shattered Mr Berlusconi's dream of being Italy's first post-war prime minister to serve a full term at the head of a single administration and has been a huge political blow both to him and his fractious allies, it added.