No end to Italy deadlock as president meets parties

By James Mackenzie

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's political parties remained far apart on Friday as President Giorgio Napolitano searched for a way out of the month-long stalemate since deadlocked elections left no group able to form a government alone.

Napolitano met political leaders on Friday after center-left chief Pier Luigi Bersani, who won the largest share of the vote but fell short of a majority in parliament, failed to reach a deal with other parties that would allow him to govern.

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi insisted that the only solution was for Bersani to accept a coalition deal that would give the media tycoon a share in power but he was immediately rebuffed by a senior Democratic Party official.

The 76-year-old billionaire said there was "no other solution" than a coalition and he ruled out backing a technocrat government like the one led by outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, whom he blames for pushing Italy into recession.

"Our position has not changed. We expressed it with absolute clarity to the president," center-right leader Berlusconi told reporters after the meeting with Napolitano.

Luigi Zanda, Senate leader for Bersani's Democratic Party(PD), said it was "very difficult" to imagine a coalition with Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party.

"There are too many important issues in PDL policies that are light years from those of the Democratic Party," he told SkyTG television.

After five days of talks that ended on Thursday, Bersani failed to get a deal with either Berlusconi or Beppe Grillo's populist 5-Star Movement, which holds the balance of power.

Five Star repeated on Friday that it would not back a government led by any of the big parties it blames for Italy's social and economic crisis. It also rejected any "pseudo-technocrat" administration.

"Give them a vote of confidence? Those are swear words in the mouths of people like them," Grillo said in a live video broadcast on his popular blog. "They should all just go home."

A deal between center-right and center-left has been blocked by Bersani, who says Berlusconi is untrustworthy and also rejects the latter's demand to nominate a successor to Napolitano, whose mandate expires in May.

Berlusconi said there had been no deal on the presidency but it was "in the logic of things that if you form a coalition government you discuss the best president of the Republic".

PRESIDENT TAKES THE INITIATIVE

After Bersani's failure, the 87-year-old Napolitano is holding a quick round of meetings with the main parties to assess what options remain to prevent another election.

The refusal by Berlusconi and his allies in the Northern League as well as Grillo to back a technocrat government appears to narrow his options greatly and made it much less likely that an independent figure will be able to lead a non-political administration - which many see as the only way out of deadlock.

"We were against the Monti government and if there is to be another government of that type it's a thousand times better to have new elections," League leader Roberto Maroni said.

Among the names which had been considered possible candidates as a technocrat leader are Fabrizio Saccomanni, director general of the Bank of Italy or the head of the constitutional court Franco Gallo.

The political gridlock has fed growing worries about Italy's ability to confront a prolonged economic crisis that has left it in deep recession for more than a year, with a 2-trillion-euro ($2.6-trillion) public debt and record unemployment, especially among the young.

Rumors have been circulating for days that ratings agency Moody's is preparing to cut its rating on Italy's sovereign debt, which is already only two notches above "junk" grade, partly due to the uncertain political outlook.

Napolitano has made clear that he does not want Italy to go back to new elections immediately, not least because the widely criticized election law is likely to just repeat the deadlock.

But many are already preparing to vote again, with Berlusconi's center-right confident that the momentum created by his surge towards the end of the last campaign will continue.

A poll by the SWG company on Friday showed the center-right had pushed Bersani's bloc into second place since the vote.

($1 = 0.7788 euros)

(Additional reporting by Naomi O'Leary; Editing by Barry Moody and Michael Roddy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/italys-president-seeks-way-political-deadlock-091517168.html

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