EU File: Italian PM and alleged KGB/FSB agent Prodi resigns, far left deputies oppose Afghanistan troop deployment; government in no danger of falling

Even if Prime Minister Romano Prodi is unable to cobble together another government, three factors remain unchanged: his left-communist coalition controls at least one half of the Italian Parliament, the otherwise ceremonial position of Italian President is held by communist Giorgio Napolitano, and Italy, like most of the "new European Soviet," has been thoroughly decimated by domestic socialist policies and infiltrated by Moscow's agents. Italian governments are notoriously short-lived, but in spite of the current political crisis, Dario Franceschini, leader of the governing Union coalition has assured Prodi that all of the coalition members will continue to support the ex-President of the European Commission.

Italian crisis talks as PM quits
February 22, 2007

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano has begun crisis talks following the resignation of Prime Minister Romano Prodi after just 10 months in office.

Mr Prodi quit after several of his centre-left coalition partners opposed troop deployments in Afghanistan and plans to expand a US airbase in Italy.

Mr Napolitano may call new elections if agreement is not reached on forming a new coalition government. Mr Prodi will stay on as caretaker prime minister in the meantime.

The talks are expected to last well into Friday, the president's office has said.

The BBC's Mark Duff in Milan says the smart money is on a much-weakened Mr Prodi being offered a new mandate to govern.

If so, he could return at the head of a new centre-left coalition, possibly including the opposition Christian Democrats.

Failing that, our correspondent says, the president may feel obliged to construct a temporary government of technocrats to hold the fort - and push through urgent measures like pensions reform and the next year's budget.

Mr Napolitano cut short a trip to Bologna to return to Rome for talks with Mr Prodi on Wednesday, during which his prime minister tendered his resignation.

He was expected first to meet Senate Speaker Franco Marini, before holding talks with his counterpart in the lower house, Fausto Bertinotti, and the heads of parliamentary groups.

If agreement cannot be reached, Mr Napolitano could call early elections, although it would be well ahead of their scheduled date in 2011.

The coalition's leader in the lower house of parliament, Dario Franceschini, said the main groups in the nine-party governing alliance would continue to back Mr Prodi.

It was the opposition of several more left-wing coalition senators to what critics have called his "pro-American" foreign policy that cost Mr Prodi the senate vote.

Street protests

There were dramatic scenes in the upper house, the Senate, on Wednesday as the government lost its motion by just two votes.

The result was met by cries of "resign! resign!" by right-wing senators, and the sitting was suspended shortly afterwards.

The motion had asked the Senate to approve the government's foreign policy, a policy which it said was inspired by a repudiation of war and respect for the role of the EU, UN and international alliances.

Although it was not a formal confidence vote, Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema had urged the government to resign if it could not win backing for its foreign policy.

Mr Prodi's government had been forced on the defensive over the continued deployment of 2,000 Italian troops in Afghanistan, with strong opposition from some of his more left-wing coalition partners.

Plans for the expansion of a big US military base in Vicenza, northern Italy, had also sparked protests both within his government and on the street, with large demonstrations in Vicenza at the weekend.

US President George W Bush wants to strengthen the base by transferring from Germany to Italy another 2,000 US soldiers, taking the total number stationed in Vicenza to nearly 5,000.

Mr D'Alema told the senate that to renege on the approval given by Mr Prodi last month for the base's expansion would be a "hostile act" towards the US.

Source: BBC News Online

Was the Italian Far Right's Strategy of Tension in the 1970s and 1980s a Soviet False Flag Operation?

Deceased FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko and another former KGB agent (probably Oleg Gordievsky) alleged that Prodi is an agent of the Russian Federation Federal Security Service, the KGB's nom de jure. What Italian communists could not take through the domestic terrorist provocations known as the strategy of tension during the First Cold War, they have taken by stealth by renaming themselves at the ballot box. Putatively carried out by neo-fascist cells such as the Ordine Nuovo, Avanguardia Nazionale, and Fronte Nazionale, and attributed to a communist insurgency to discredit and prevent the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from entering the government, the "far-right" terrorism that plagued Italy during the 1970s and 1980s, in our estimation, bore the hallmarks of a Kremlin-concocted "false flag" operation that actually undermined the cause of anti-communism in that country. This is standard fare for communists, who typically blame the world's ills on fascism.

Fast forward to "post"-communist Italy, in which the PCI, now renamed as the Democrats of the Left, occupies an important role in Prodi's coalition government.