950828

Forza Italia's Previti wants budget deal with PDS

ROME: A leading member of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party said he saw a possible deal with the right wing and Italy's former communists to pass a toned-down 1996 budget and call an early election.

"I believe that in the interests of the country a pact with Forza Italia, National Alliance and the PDS is possible," former defence minister Cesare Previti was quoted as saying in the daily Il Messaggero newspaper. "I think it is a hypothesis to be seriously considered. We know, in fact, that the three of us at least want early elections and so we could therefore decide to vote a light budget and then go straight to the polls."

He said he had spoken to Berlusconi who agreed on the need to pass the budget.

Asked when elections might happen, Previti replied: "To go to the polls in November we would have to move very, very fast. It seems more likely in the Spring."

He added that it would be difficult to get the parties to agree such a pact but that it was worth trying.

"We need to reach an agreement otherwise the situation in the country will become more and more difficult," he said.

PDS leader Massimo D'Alema called at the weekend for technocrat prime minister Lamberto Dini to offer his resignation after an equal access decree was approved rather than waiting for the budget to be passed by parliament.

The budget must be presented to parliament by the end of September and passed by the end of the year.

The equal access decree guarantees equal media access for political parties in the event of a general election. The PDS want it in place before any poll because Berlusconi controls three of Italy's main private television stations.-Reuter