President Giorgio Napolitano will open talks on Friday to resolve Italy's political crisis after Prime Minister Romano Prodi's resignation and the end of his centre-left government.While the centre-right is clamouring for snap elections after 20 months in opposition, observers say the President is unlikely to send voters back to the ballot box before Italy's electoral law is overhauled. Right-wing newspapers gloated over the demise of 68-year-old Prodi, the archrival of conservative flag bearer Silvio Berlusconi, both of them now former prime ministers twice over.
''The dream has come true,'' headlined Il Libero over a cartoon showing Prodi hanged by the Senate, where the Prime Minister lost a vote of confidence on Thursday, precipitating his resignation. Prodi ''leaves the country in tatters,'' the paper wrote.
The left-leaning press was more sympathetic; Ezio Mauro writing in the daily La Repubblica that the former economic professor's exit was a ''strange and unjust destiny for a politician who has twice defeated Berlusconi (and) twice cleaned up the public accounts.''
Berlusconi, now 71, and right-wing National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini immediately called for fresh elections on news of the resignation.