Italian President Giorgio Napolitano started crisis talks on Friday meant to rescue Italy from political limbo after the resignation of the prime minister raised the specter of snap elections.

Italy's 61st government since World War II collapsed late on Thursday after Prime Minister Romano Prodi lost, as expected, a confidence vote in the Senate after just 20 months in office.

Napolitano will hold meetings until next Tuesday aimed at trying to avoid calling Italians back to the polls so quickly, possibly by forging consensus for an interim government.

But the opposition led by Italy's richest man - former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi - is pressing for elections that opinion polls suggest will return him to power.

"We must vote as quickly as possible to lift the country out of this quagmire," said Berlusconi's spokesman, Paolo Bonaiuti.

Napolitano, an 82-year-old, is known to oppose holding snap polls under the messy current electoral system, which saddled Prodi with a razor-thin Senate majority.

The president will attempt to see whether there is support for an interim government, whose main task would be to change the voting rules before sending Italians back to the polls.

His first crisis meeting began at 1600 GMT on Friday with the 74-year-old president of the senate, Franco Marini - widely tipped as a possible candidate to lead an interim government.

Beyond Marini, newspapers speculated that Prodi's interior minister, Giuliano Amato, might also be picked.

Agencies

(China Daily 01/26/2008 page11)