By Philip Pullella
President Giorgio Napolitano held talks with the speakers of both houses of parliament on Tuesday -- the penultimate formal step mandated by the constitution before calling elections.
Then Prodi was to hold a cabinet meeting to decide the timing of the two-day elections, with April 13-14 seen as the most likely dates.
Napolitano had asked the speaker of the Senate to see if he could muster enough support for a temporary government to reform the electoral system.
The centre right has had a consistent lead in surveys of voter intentions, ahead of the centre left by as much as 16 points by some estimates.
INSTABILITY
Some analysts also worry another free-spending Berlusconi government will undo the centre-left's work on cutting the budget deficit.
Prodi won the 2006 vote by the narrowest margin in Italy's modern history. He was eventually forced to quit when the defection of a small Catholic party erased his razor-thin majority in the Senate.
(Additional reporting by Silvia Aloisi, Paolo Biondi, Robin Pomeroy and Stephen Brown; Editing by Charles Dick)
