Berlusconi rejects truce offer from party rival
ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has rebuffed a peace offering from a party rival, potentially bringing forward a final showdown in his strife-torn centre-right government.
Berlusconi has been locked for months in open conflict with Gianfranco Fini, the lower house speaker and co-founder of his People of Freedom party, prompting growing speculation that his government could fall well before its term ends in 2013.
The prime minister is due to host a meeting of senior party leaders on Thursday evening, after final clearance of the government's 25 billion euro (21 billion pound) austerity package, at which a motion to censure Fini is expected to be presented, according to a party source.
In an interview with the Il Foglio newspaper on Thursday, Fini said he was prepared to come to an agreement with Berlusconi to end their increasingly acrimonious rivalry.
"Let's reset everything, without resentment," he said. "Berlusconi and I don't have a duty to be friends or even to appear to be friends but we should honour a political and electoral commitment with the Italian people."
However Italian newspapers reported that Berlusconi had met senior party allies late on Wednesday and had decided that the offer from Fini, who is estimated to command some 50 votes in parliament, was too late.
"Berlusconi ready to expel Fini," headlined the daily La Repubblica.
A break between the warring People of Freedom camps could lead to early elections but would not necessarily do so if Berlusconi could secure support in parliament from smaller centrist parties.
President Giorgio Napolitano could also appoint an interim government that would run business until new elections, such as the administration headed by former Finance Minister Lamberto Dini in 1995.
"NO POSSIBILITY OF CHANGE"
The hostility between the two leaders has overshadowed Italian politics for months, complicating moves to pass the austerity budget that is aimed at shoring up the country's tottering public finances.
The government won a confidence motion on the bill in the lower house on Wednesday, clearing the way for final approval on Thursday and removing a key obstacle that had been restraining Berlusconi from an open break.
In a speech to Italian ambassadors on Wednesday, Berlusconi said that the governing coalition between the People of Freedom and the smaller Northern League was strong enough to survive even without Fini.
"There is absolutely no possibility of a change in the coalition or government," he said.
As well as its internal splits, Berlusconi's government has been engulfed by a wave of scandals that have cost two ministers and a junior minister their jobs and ensnared some of his close associates in a judicial investigation into influence-peddling.
Fini has enraged the prime minister by hammering away at the theme of morality and legality in government and insisting that officials implicated in judicial investigations should resign.
He has also helped force Berlusconi to water down a bill that would limit the use of wiretaps by magistrates and would have strongly restricted press reporting of wiretap transcripts, a move critics say would hamper the fight against corruption.