Prodi 'can return to power'

A top ally of Italy’s caretaker prime minister claims Romano Prodi has secured enough support from the country’s centre-left coalition to win the confidence vote needed to return to power.

The news follows the Italian president’s rejection of Mr Prodi’s resignation.

“We have the majority,” Piero Fassino, who leads the coalition’s largest party, said in an interview on state radio about the government’s chances of winning in the crucial vote in the senate, where Mr Prodi’s loss on a foreign policy vote last week sparked the resignation.

Mr Prodi began his premiership in May with a razor-thin majority in the upper chamber. On Wednesday, when a couple of senators from the far left in his coalition refused to back him on Italy’s military mission in Afghanistan and other foreign policy, some of the senators-for-life declined to come to his rescue, and Prodi immediately offered his resignation.

Mr Fassino, who heads a former Communist party, gave the tally of loyal votes in the radio interview – 158 of 315 elected senators – just enough to squeak by with victory.

Counting pro-left senators-for-life, Mr Fassino calculated, would give Prodi’s government 162 out of 322, a close-cut majority in the coalition’s favour.