Berlusconi demands early elections

ROME, Italy -- Italian opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi has told Italy's president that only early elections can end the political crisis sparked by the resignation of Premier Romano Prodi last week.

Berlusconi, a former prime minister, on Tuesday rejected the possibility of an interim government and said an electoral law widely blamed for Italy's political instability did not need to be changed.

"We believe there is no other way than returning to the polls and giving the county a government as soon as possible, a government that is immediately operational," The Associated Press reported Berlusconi as saying after talks with President Giorgio Napolitano.

Napolitano was consulting political leaders after Prodi, in office for 20 months, resigned on losing a confidence vote in the Senate.

The prime minister lost his razor-thin majority last week when a centrist party in his center-left coalition withdrew its support. The move wiped out the government's one-vote majority in the Senate.

Knowing he faced likely rejection, Prodi could have decided to resign before the vote. His decision to go ahead with it was seen by some as a complicated political gamble.

Some analysts say Napolitano may hope to stave off early elections so he can instead work on reforming Italian electoral law. Among the changes would be limiting the ability of small parties to threaten coalition governments by dragging them through a series of confidence votes.

That is what sparked Prodi's problems in the first place.

Last week, Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, of the centrist Udeur Party, resigned after he was put under investigation, and his wife was placed under house arrest, for alleged corruption. Both deny any wrongdoing.

Mastella then complained that his government colleagues had failed to support him, so he withdrew his party from the coalition.

Prodi took office after one of the closest-fought elections in Italian history. He was forced to resign in February 2006 but was reinstated after a Senate confidence vote.

His predecessor as prime minister, media magnate Berlusconi, on Thursday cheered and opened a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate Prodi's defeat. E-mail to a friend

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