Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has insisted the only way out of Italy's political deadlock is for his centre-left rivals to accept a coalition deal that would give him a share in power.
Berlusconi met President Giorgio Napolitano yesterday, after centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani failed to end a month-old stalemate since an election last month that has fuelled worries about the stability of the eurozone's third-largest economy.
The 76-year-old billionaire said there was "no other solution" than a coalition. He also 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," centre-right leader Mr Berlusconi told reporters after the meeting with Mr Napolitano.
"Our position is the one the polls dictate: a broad coalition between the available forces... an absolutely political government, given the negative and tragic experience we had of a technocrat government," he said. A senior official from Mr Bersani's Democratic Party (PD) rebuffed the offer, saying 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," Luigi Zanda, head of the PD group in the Senate, told a television station. After five days of talks this week, Mr Bersani, who won the biggest share of the vote in the election but fell short of a majority, failed to get a deal with either Mr Berlusconi, or Beppe Grillo's 5-Star Movement, which holds the balance of power. The anti-establishment 5-Star group refuses to back a government led by any of the parties it blames for Italy's social and economic crisis.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article