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A leading Italian neo-fascist with a nine-year conviction for conspiracy after the bombing of Bologna train station in 1980 has taken a seat in the European Parliament. Roberto Fiore, 49, came to Britain in the wake of the bombing, which left 85 people dead and over 200 wounded. The attack was carried out by the Nucleus of Armed Revolutionaries, a far-Right terrorist group. Although Mr Fiore, a member of the Third Position cell, was not directly involved in the execution of the bombing, he was convicted for conspiring to carry out an armed attack. He lived in the UK for...

So the Kremlin can't buy every retiring European leader. Romano Prodi, for one, won't soon be bunking with Gerhard Schröder in Moscow. Vladimir Putin personally tried to tap the outgoing Italian Prime Minister to become chairman of South Stream, a new pipeline project by Russian gas monopolist Gazprom to link Russia to Europe. Mr. Prodi was "flattered" by the offer, his spokesman said, but won't be available. While in government, Mr. Prodi backed the 50-50 joint venture between Gazprom and Italy's Eni to pump 30 billion cubic meters of Russian gas through South Stream, scheduled to go on line in...

Huge, perhaps historic, victory for Berlusconi's "Popolo della liberta' " (which translates a bit awkwardly as "the people of liberty;" maybe it's better to call it "the freedom folks"). It's considerably worse than AP lets on. Berlusconi defeated Walter Veltroni's "Democratic Party" by a full 9 points in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. And since the Italian electoral system gives a bonus to the winning side, the margins are very big and stable: 340 to 241 in the Chamber (with another 36 for a couple of small parties), and 167 to 137 in the Senate (with 5...

ROME (AFP) — Self-made billionaire Silvio Berlusconi looked set to win a third term as Italian prime minister Monday, with early projections giving him a wide margin of victory in the all-important Senate. Berlusconi's centre-right coalition has a lead of between 4.6 and 9.1 percentage points in the Senate, according to projections based on about one-third of statistical samplings of the vote. A victory for Berlusconi, 71, would return the media tycoon to the prime minister's office for the third time since 1994, the year after he burst onto the political stage by creating the Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party....

With his much-publicized alleged face-lift, hair transplant, and frequently outrageous comments, Italy's former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi... could become his country's prime minister for the third time... April 13-14 following the defeat last month of the center-left government of prime minister Romano Prodi... [CIA manipulation/conspiracy nonsense omitted] ...Signor Berlusconi has been... forming center-right coalitions that brought him first to power in 1999 for a brief seven months and then again in 2001 for a lengthy five years in office before being defeated in April 2006 by the coalition led by Prime Minister Prodi. (From 1981 to 2007, Italy had 16...

Italy’s centre-left coalition government fell on Thursday night after Romano Prodi, prime minister, narrowly lost a tumultuous vote of confidence in the Senate that his allies had advised him not to call. Defeated at the end of a long day of drama and just 20 months in office, Mr Prodi submitted his resignation to Giorgio Napolitano, the president. While keeping his pride intact, the loss could mark the end of Mr Prodi’s career as an elected politician after leading two governments that failed to complete less than half their full term. Mr Prodi has indicated he will not run again,...

ROME - Italian Premier Romano Prodi resigned Thursday night after his government lost a risky Senate confidence vote. The center-left government fell four votes short of the 160 needed for victory. The vote was 161-156. Elected in April 2006, Prodi has had a shaky government from nearly the start. But it lurched toward collapse after a small Christian Democrat party, whose votes were vital to a coalition majority in the Senate, yanked its support earlier this week in the latest squabbling among his allies. Calling early elections or asking a politician to try to form another government are among President...

Ricardo Franco Levi, Prodi’s right hand man , undersecretary to the President of the Council, has written the text to put a stopper in the mouth of the Internet. The draft law was approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 October. No Minister dissociated themselves from it. On gagging information, very quietly, these are all in agreement. The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money....

JERUSALEM - Italian Premier Romano Prodi said Monday that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and called on Gaza's Hamas rulers to release a captured Israeli soldier. Prodi was on a three-day trip to Israel and the West Bank to discuss ways to promote Mideast peacemaking. At a news conference, he joined Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in speaking of the need to block Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Nobody knew it at the time, but the fate of the Romano Prodi government that suddenly collapsed on 21 February was almost surely sealed two days before Prodi handed in his resignation, during what seemed to be a seemingly insignificant closed-door meeting with officials from the Holy See. Officially speaking, the government failed after Prodi's allies fell two votes short of the majority needed to gain approval on a vote backing Italy's peacekeeping role within the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. But while the debate over Italy's 1,900 Afghan-based troops may have been the final act in Prodi's nine-month tenure, the...

ROME (AFP) - Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi on Wednesday survived a close vote of confidence in the Senate, ending a weeklong political crisis after his resignation. The 67-year-old former European Commission chief, serving his second stint as prime minister, is expected to sail through another vote in the Chamber of Deputies, where he has a comfortable majority, on Friday. The Senate vote went in Prodi's favor by 162 to 157. Two senators whose votes were uncertain ahead of the ballot, independent Luigi Pollaro and opposition centrist Marco Follini, voted for Prodi. Four of Italy's seven unelected senators for life...

Romano Prodi, who recently resigned as Italy's prime minister, has been asked by Giorgio Napolitano, the head of state, to remain in office and face a vote of confidence in parliament, a presidential official has said. Prodi resigned on Wednesday after he lost a senate vote on foreign policy, which included keeping troops in Afghanistan. "I will go to parliament as soon as possible, with the support of a cohesive coalition determined to help the country at this difficult stage," said Prodi after Napolitano's request. Prodi's supporters earlier asked that he be given a second chance to show he can...

THEY'VE been branded "traitors" and "bastards" and worse. But the two left- wing senators who brought down Italy's prime minister, Romano Prodi, on Wednesday night say they didn't mean to do it."Maybe if I knew my vote was so fundamental, I would have reflected a bit," said Fernando Rossi, a 60-year-old communist, sounding apologetic. He and the other senator, a Trotskyite with the Communist Refoundation Party, tried their best yesterday to deflect blame. But with left-of-centre newspapers screaming headlines like: "They betrayed 19 million voters", it was a hard sell. "First off, I didn't vote against it. I abstained," said...

Italian PM Romano Prodi is to hand his resignation to the country's president after losing a crucial foreign policy vote in the Senate, a minister says. Several parties in Mr Prodi's coalition oppose Italy's deployment of 2,000 troops in Afghanistan and plans to expand a US airbase in northern Italy.

ITALY'S government, divided over the Afghan war and its US military ties, lost a crucial parliamentary vote over foreign policy overnight prompting the opposition to call on Prime Minister Romano Prodi to quit. There was no constitutional requirement for Mr Prodi to step down, but Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema had said before the vote that the centre-left government should resign if it did not command majority support on foreign policy.

MILAN (Reuters) - Prime Minister Romano Prodi and his predecessor Silvio Berlusconi will not be called to testify on behalf of Italy's former spy chief, who is accused of helping the CIA kidnap a terrorism suspect, a judge ruled on Tuesday. Prosecutors want to try 26 Americans, most believed to be CIA agents, for grabbing Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off a Milan street in 2003 and flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. Italy's former spy chief Nicolo Pollari, who risks indictment on suspicion of aiding the CIA mission, wanted Prodi and Berlusconi to defend...

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – China will contribute 1,000 men to the peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Premier Wen Jiabao announced this on 18 September during a visit of the Italian premier, Romano Prodi. Analysts believe the move is prompted by economic reasons but also by a desire to reinforce China's role in international affairs. This is the largest peace force ever dispatched by Beijing, already represented in UNIFIL by 187 soldiers. China will also give 40 million yuan (around five million US dollars) in humanitarian aid to Beirut. Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a China expert at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris,...

(ANSA) - Beijing, September 18 - Italy will work for a swift end to the European Union arms embargo against China, visiting Italian Premier Romano Prodi said here on Monday . The arms embargo was imposed following the violent 1989 crackdown on a pro-democracy protest in Beijing's central Tiennamen Square . "Our position is not new because for years we have considered the embargo something which had more to do with the past than with the future," Prodi said . Lifting the embargo, he observed, "will not change the situation radically because China has become self-sufficient, if not more, in...

Russia on Friday cast new doubt on the prospects for the Bush administration’s efforts to punish Iran for refusing to suspend its nuclear program, even as European leaders expressed wariness at moving quickly to impose sanctions. In Moscow, officials expressed regret that an Aug. 31 deadline had passed without an agreement by Iran to halt its efforts to enrich uranium that could be used for building nuclear weapons, as American and European officials believe Iran intends to do.

Rome, 14 June (AKI) - Italy's Consulta, a government-appointed body on Muslim affairs, will draft a reform plan to change the country's citizenship laws and present it to the new centre-left government of Romano Prodi, its members said on Wednesday after meeting Interior Minister Giuliano Amato. The Consulta's panel, which includes people from a wide range of backgrounds and from ten Muslim nations, asked at the meeting for a law making it easier for immigrants to acquire citizenship. They will present their proposals within the next three weeks. Under the Consulta's proposal to the cabinet, which was sworn in last...