Italian Premier Stepping Down

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi will resign and form a new government to strengthen his struggling conservative coalition, weakened by a crushing defeat in regional elections this month, a top official said Monday.

The move brings Italy's longest serving postwar government to an end. Berlusconi's Cabinet has been in power for four years, a rare achievement in a country with a history of unstable politics.

Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini made the announcement in a statement after an emergency meeting of coalition leaders in Rome.

Berlusconi had been under pressure to resign since the coalition lost 11 of the 13 regions that were up for grabs in elections this month. Last week, a small centrist party headed by Deputy Premier Marco Follini pulled its ministers out of the Cabinet and demanded that Berlusconi form a fresh government with a new platform.

The foreign minister said that at the meeting, Follini "renewed (his) commitment to a new Berlusconi government" and Berlusconi made the "ensuing decision to hand in his resignation to the head of state."

Berlusconi was set to visit President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi later Monday, but the exact time was not clear.

Resigning and immediately forming a new government is a tactic that has been used often by Italian premiers to strengthen faltering coalitions. Berlusconi had resisted the move, dismissing it as a remnant of Italy's messy political past.

Once the premier hands in a resignation, it is up to the president to decide whether to ask Berlusconi — or another candidate — to form a new government, or else dissolve parliament and call early elections. However, if a political agreement has been reached among majority forces, the president is expected to go along with it.

Berlusconi's coalition took power in 2001, and the premier hoped the government would become the first in postwar Italy to serve out the full five-year term.

After the center-right's collapse in the April 3-4 regional vote, Berlusconi had proposed a Cabinet reshuffle and a revised program to relaunch the coalition ahead of the general election next year. The proposal was rejected by Follini's party, the Union of Christian Democrats.