almotamar.net google news - Fears were revived that Italy was returning to the days of short-lived governments and paralysis in policymaking after Romano Prodi resigned as Italian prime minister following a parliamentary defeat on foreign policy.
Mr Prodi, 67, handed in his resignation to Giorgio Napolitano, Italy's head of state, who planned to start talks with politicians on Thursday to see who, if anyone, has enough support to form a new government.
Mr Prodi's nine-party, centre-left coalition took office in May, a month after he defeated Silvio Berlusconi, the former centre-right premier, in the closest election in modern Italian history.
The sudden crisis that overwhelmed Mr Prodi centred on his inability to persuade communists and other radical leftists in his coalition to support two cornerstones of Italian foreign and security policy. These were Mr Prodi's determination to keep Italian troops side by side with Nato forces in Afghanistan and his decision to permit the expansion of a US military base in the north-eastern city of Vicenza.
Although the radical left said it did not want to bring down Mr Prodi, the parliamentary rebellion of a handful of dissident leftwingers was sufficient to ensure that the government lost a motion by two votes in the Senate, the legislature's upper house.
Mr Prodi felt obliged to resign because the defeat signalled that his coalition was incapable of producing a majority from its own ranks to ensure that Italy met its international commitments. The options facing Italy's political classes include the formation of a new Prodi-led government; the creation of a centre-left government without him; the emergence of a centrist-dominated government including moderate opposition politicians; and a snap general election.
Pierluigi Castagnetti, a centre-left moderate and deputy speaker of parliament's lower house, said he did not want a snap election – not least because Italy's electoral law, a fully proportional representation system, needed to be changed first.
The Union of Christian Democrats, the third largest and most moderate opposition party, said it was ready to hold talks with centre-left parties.
Mr Prodi's government, which came to power after winning a general election last April, was the 61st in Italy since the second world war and held office for nine months – slightly less than the average government length between 1945 and 2001.
Although he started to restore order to the shaky public finances and began to open up Italy's professions and service industries to more competition, the government was always under pressure because of its one-seat majority in the Senate.
The abrupt crisis appeared to surprise many communists and radical leftists, who wanted to flag their discontent with Mr Prodi's foreign policy but without toppling their government.
Mr Berlusconi said Mr Prodi had no choice but to resign; Massimo D'Alema, foreign minister, made clear on Tuesday that the government would "go home" if it lost Wednesday's vote.