Don’t go to Italy, there are many KGB agents among the politicians: Romano Prodi is our man there.
– General Anatoly Trofimov, FSB Deputy Chief (assassinated 2005), statement made to FSB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko (assassinated 2006), circa 2000; quoted at United Kingdom Independence Party website, March 4, 2006
In spite of a political hiccup, Italy remains securely within the Communist Bloc. Pictured here are Italian Prime Minister, former European Commission President, and alleged KGB/FSB agent Romano Prodi, visiting President Vladimir (“There’s No Such Thing as a Former KGB Man”) Putin at the latter’s Black Sea hideaway in Sochi, Russia on January 23, 2007. The topic of discussion included energy, trade, and international politics. State-run Novosti reported: “Energy cooperation projects between Russia and Italy include a consortium of Russian utility company ESN and Italy’s ENEL, which jointly manages the Russia’s North-West Thermal Power Plant, and a strategic partnership agreement between Russian energy giant Gazprom and Italy’s ENI signed last November.” According to the same report, Russian and Italian foreign policy harmonize in their opposition to US intervention overseas, such as in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. Novosti observed that this was the third meeting between the Russian and Italian heads of government in seven months.
It was over Italian troop deployment in Afghanistan, in particular, that prompted communist backbenchers in Prodi’s leftist Union coalition to spark the recent political crisis.
Prodi wins vote of confidence in Senate By Ian Fisher
Thursday, March 1, 2007
ROME: Italy’s political crisis ended, for the moment, after the Senate narrowly passed a vote of confidence in Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s fragile government.
“The government is like the Tower of Pisa — it leans but doesn’t fall,” Justice Minister Clemente Mastella said after the 162-157 vote late Wednesday.
But the voting suggested less a strong and viable government aimed at electoral reform than one fated to face a new election before its five-year term is over.
In speeches before the vote, even some of Prodi’s supporters said that while they would vote for renewing the government, they would not back him on several issues where every vote counts.
Indeed, another crisis may not be far off: A vote on Italy’s peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan — one of the same issues that temporarily knocked down Prodi’s government a week ago — is set for the next two weeks.
In a speech in the Senate, Franco Turigliatto of the Refounded Communists, one of the senators who provoked the crisis a week ago, said he could not support the peacekeeping measure or such others as those involving a planned high-speed train line in the north and pension reform.
“This is not the mandate we received,” Turigliatto told his colleagues.
Still, Prodi said that he was relieved that this crisis was over and that he could resume his nine-month-old government — the 61st in Italy since 1945.
“I am very satisfied,” he said after the vote. “Now we go to the Chamber.”
He was referring to the lower house of Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, where the government faces a second vote of confidence on Friday. Since the government enjoys a larger majority there, the vote is expected to favor Prodi’s government.
The crisis began a week ago after Turigliatto and another far-left senator abstained from a key vote on Prodi’s foreign policy in disagreements over Afghanistan and the government’s support of the expansion of a U.S. military base in Vicenza, in Italy’s north.
The vote went against Prodi, and he resigned. But on Saturday, the Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, said there was “no concrete choice” and asked Prodi to try again.
Even though Prodi was able to at least partly solidify his support among bickering parties, analysts and political leaders began focusing on the larger, structural problems underlying Italy’s unstable politics.
In recent days, Prodi himself pledged to tackle the most pressing of them: an electoral law that virtually guarantees a small majority in the Senate.
In speeches in the Senate on Tuesday and again just before voting on Wednesday, he promised immediate changes. But that will prove difficult in itself, because, he noted, it will require support from across the nation’s divided political interests.
“The new electoral law must guarantee governability and continuity in politics,” he told senators on Wednesday. He added that the solution “must be shared by everyone.”
The present law was passed before last year’s elections by Silvio Berlusconi, then the prime minister, despite the opposition by Prodi and his allies. Now even Berlusconi’s allies concede that the law is deeply flawed and they are urging changes.
Source: International Herald Tribune
PM wins second vote of confidence
From correspondents in Rome
March 03, 2007 12:33am
ITALIAN Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s centre-left government today easily won a vote of confidence in the lower house Chamber of Deputies, formally ending a weeklong political crisis.
The Government prevailed by 342 votes to 253, with two abstentions, Speaker Fausto Bertinotti announced.
Today’s vote brought a formal end to a crisis sparked by Mr Prodi’s abrupt resignation last Wednesday after two communist senators in his coalition torpedoed a vote of confidence in his foreign policy.
Mr Prodi, in power just nine months, survived a vote of confidence on Wednesday in the Senate, where his fragile coalition’s majority is razor-thin, by a mere five votes, including those of four senators-for-life.
The centre-left’s comfortable majority in the 630-seat lower house is bolstered by a majority prize of 30 seats under Italian electoral law.
To bring into line his squabbling coalition, Prodi, 67 and serving his second stint as prime minister, had them sign on to a 12-point “non-negotiable” agreement.
Source: News.com
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