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NASSIRIYA, Iraq (Reuters) -- Italy will redouble its efforts to help the reconstruction of Iraq even after withdrawing its troops this year, new Defense Minister Arturo Parisi said. "The withdrawal does not mean we are turning our back on the Iraqis," Parisi said Tuesday during his first visit to Italy's military contingent in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya. "Italy's commitment will proceed through strengthened political, civil and humanitarian assistance, and support for (Iraq's) institutions and the reconstruction of the country." However, Parisi said it was too early to say whether Italy would keep civilians in Iraq after its soldiers...

ROME - Italy will pull 1,100 of its troops from Iraq in June, the new government said Friday, giving its first specific numbers about the planned withdrawal. "In June we will reduce our troops from 2,700 to 1,600," Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said during an evening television show. His announcement came hours after he met with Premier Romano Prodi to map Italy's exit strategy from the U.S.-led coalition. Most Italian troops in Iraq are in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. They are involved in training, security and reconstruction. The decision to withdraw this many troops by June belongs to...

ROME, May 25, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Reuters reports that Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, reprimanded his ministers Tuesday for expressing their personal opinions on sensitive social issues such as abortion and homosexual civil unions. Although the recently elected Prime Minister had vowed to bring in legal recognition for homosexual partnerings, his coalition government is divided on these and similar issues. L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper rebuked Italy's health minister, Livia Turco, for her support of the deadly abortion drug, RU-486 which it called the weapon for "carefree murder." Turco had called the drug which has killed a "safe and...

ITALIAN JUSTICE MINISTER LINKED TO MAFIA INQUIRY Prodi forced to name man holding balance of power. Clemente Mastella was at mob associate’s wedding. Mr Mastella was questioned this year at Italy’s National Anti-mafia Directorate in Rome about his relations with Francesco Campanella, who confessed to helping the mafia’s then-fugitive boss, Bernardo Provenzano. In July 2000 Mr Mastella was a witness at Mr Campanella’s wedding. Mr Mastella was not a suspect and has not been accused of any offence. Mr Campanella, who sat on the town council of Villabate, a mob-ridden town outside Palermo, has confessed to providing vital assistance to...

ROME -- Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said Thursday the war in Iraq was a "grave" mistake, but said Italy would remain on the front lines in the war against terror. "We consider the war and occupation in Iraq a grave error that hasn't solved -- but has complicated -- the problem of security," Prodi said in his first address to the Senate as prime minister. "Terrorism has found a new base and new excuses for internal and external terrorist action."

Newly elected Italian President Giorgio Napolitano waves as he leaves Italian Senate A huge applause broke out when the provisional results showed former Communist Giorgio Napolitano was elected Italy's 11th post-war WW II president. The speaker of the lower house Fausto Bertinotti later officially confirmed the result. Bertinotti announced that the new head of state had obtained 543 votes and a long applause erupted in parliament. The number of votes was well above the minimum 505 mark required for victory. He then announced the winner."I proclaim elected President of the Republic, Senator Giorgio Napolitano," he said.Giorgio Napolitano, 80, was elected...

An article on L’Opinione reports (in Italian) that anti-globalization and communist groups based in Italy, among which is the infamous “anti-imperialist camp” (that collecting “Euros for the Iraqi resistance”) coordinated with Islamic terrorists in Iraq to attack our troops in Nassiryiah. The Italian intelligence heard phone conversations in which the red fundamentalists instructed the Islamists about how and when to kill our soldiers. It seems that the attack was organized in order to pressure Mr. Prodi to speed the pullout from Iraq. And of course all was coordinated by the Islamic Republic of Iran. I am sorry that I can’t...

Silvio Berlusconi has formally resigned as prime minister of Italy, paving the way for Romano Prodi to form a new government of the centre-left. The centre-right leader, who was narrowly defeated at last month's election, handed in his notice to President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. However, Mr Ciampi has asked him to stay on as caretaker prime minister. The president is himself leaving office this month and wants his successor to oversee the change of government. But he is under growing political pressure to appoint Mr Prodi this week. Mr Berlusconi went to the Quirinal Palace, the official residence of Mr...

ROME - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the longest-serving leader in postwar Italy, resigned Tuesday to make way for a center-left government led by Romano Prodi that must re-energize a moribund economy. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi asked Berlusconi to remain on as caretaker prime minister during their 30-minute meeting at the Quirinale Palace. "The president of the republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, has met this morning with Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who has handed in the resignation of the Cabinet over which he presides," the president's office said in a statement.

Pizza maker gets ready to quit the Iraq coalition By Oliver Poole in Nasariyah (Filed: 02/05/2006) The election of Romano Prodi as Italy's prime minister is not good news for Signore Ciano, a pizza maker flown to Iraq by the Italian military more than two years ago to ensure that its troops there ate in a style their mothers would approve of. Since he established his Neapolitan-style restaurant on a base near Nasariyah, it has served about 150 pizzas a day - a number that partly reflects its popularity with dozens of female American troops from an adjacent camp who...

ROME, April 29 (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Saturday he would resign, ending three weeks of wrangling over a narrow election defeat and clearing the political decks for Romano Prodi to take power. Berlusconi, who had previously alleged election fraud and refused to formally concede defeat after April 9-10 polls, would hand his resignation to President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi on Tuesday after a scheduled cabinet meeting, officials said. Prodi's centre-left coalition, ranging from communists to centrist Roman Catholics, won the election by the smallest margin in modern Italian history and will have to find quick remedies...

Still refusing to concede defeat in the Italian general election, Silvio Berlusconi put on another bravura performance at the weekend by serenading his supporters and then threatening to paralyse the incoming government. The former cruise ship crooner took to the stage in a hotel restaurant in Trieste in northern Italy, singing a medley of Neapolitan ballads. He also treated his audience, who applauded wildly, to a song he said he had composed in the wake of the election result, in which he talks about going to live on a tropical island. Afterwards he returned to attacking Romano Prodi, whose centre-left...

Italy’s highest court on Wednesday cleared the way for Romano Prodi, the centre-left leader, to take over as prime minister by certifying his victory in last week’s hotly disputed general election. Having reviewed several thousand contested ballot papers, the Court of Cassation confirmed that Mr Prodi’s alliance had defeated the centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi, the premier who has governed Italy since 2001. Mr Berlusconi refused last week to acknowledge Mr Prodi’s victory, but some politicians in his coalition have signalled their willingness to accept the result and go into opposition. They calculate that, with a mere two-seat majority in...

Italy's political limbo ended yesterday when the Supreme Court ruled that Romano Prodi had beaten Silvio Berlusconi in the country's bitterly fought general election.The court ruled that Mr Prodi's centre-Left coalition had won by just under 25,000 votes in the disputed lower house, a margin that was almost unchanged from the initial verdict 10 days ago, despite a succession of claims of voting fraud and shrill demands for recounts by Mr Berlusconi. Allies of Mr Berlusconi, 69, who remains prime minister until a new government is sworn in, insisted that their leader and his centre-Right coalition would not concede defeat...

LEAVING the San Siro stadium on Friday evening after watching AC Milan, the team he owns, beat their city rivals Inter 1-0, Silvio Berlusconi declared: "I am an optimist, a fighter."Despite being narrowly defeated in last week's general election, the pugnacious Italian prime minister is being true to his word. Berlusconi has published a letter in the nation's leading newspaper, the Corriere della Serra, calling for his victorious opponent, Romano Prodi, to join him in a "grand coalition" of their two parties, and threatening to topple a future Prodi government if it turns his offer down. Italy, the leader of...

Italo-Australians may have helped topple Silvio Berlusconi's government, Natasha Bita reports from Rome. CELEBRATING his election to the Italian Senate this week, Melbourne journalist Nino Randazzo fielded a phone call from party headquarters in Rome, worried whether he could be counted to support the centre-left Unione, the winner by a very small margin in a disputed tally. "Can we count on you?" the Italian politician grilled him. "Are you sure you will remain faithful to your commitment to support the Unione?" Randazzo was appalled. "I took it as an offence," he tells Inquirer. "I told him that Italians living overseas...

Italians fear Florida repeat as Berlusconi digs in By Philippe Naughton and agencies Italy is facing the prospect of a protracted Florida-style electoral wrangle caused by Silvio Berlusconi's refusal to accept the results of this week's parliamentary elections. With official results giving his centre-left opponents a wafer-thin majority, Signor Berlusconi met President Ciampi for more than an hour last night to inform him of "innumerable irregularities" in the two-day election, which ended on Monday. Citing government sources, major newspapers reported today that he had asked the President to sign a special decree ordering an unprecendented recount of 1.1 million spoiled...

CONTINENTAL Europe is at a crossroads. No, scratch that. Continental Europe was at a crossroads a few years ago. This week, it appears to have chosen its path. Taken together, the results of Italy's general election (which turfed out an economic reformer in favour of a former EU president) and the French Government's cave-in to rioters protesting against employment law reform suggest that the strongest forces in Europe today are those of appeasement, stasis and socialism. In Italy, voters were faced with a choice between media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, who was swept into office five years ago promising to cure...

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday denounced what he called widespread fraud at Italy's general election and demanded his center-left rival Romano Prodi be stripped of victory. Prodi immediately condemned Berlusconi's efforts to overturn the results of the April 9-10 election, the closest in modern Italian history, and his allies warned that the prime minister was stoking dangerous political tensions. The stand-off between the leaders of Italy's two main coalitions pushed Europe's fourth largest economy into uncharted waters and toward a full-blown crisis. "The election result has to change because there was widespread fraud," Berlusconi told reporters after meeting President...

Centre-left leader also stresses commitment to EU (ANSA) - Rome, April 12 - Centre-left leader Romano Prodi confirmed on Wednesday that his coalition intended to pull Italian troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006 and to push for a softer European line on Hamas. In a series of comments to the media on his foreign policy objectives, the former European Commission chief also confirmed that he would be more pro-Brussels and less pro-Washington than Premier Silvio Berlusconi . Much of the foreign interest in Prodi's foreign policy focused on Italy's involvement in Iraq. The country did not take...