SECOND ATTEMPT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27296, 24 January 1950, Page 5

SECOND ATTEMPT

Formation Of Italian Government

Coalition Difficulties

NZPA—Copyright Rec. 9.20 p.m. LONDON, Jan. 23. Reuter’s Rome correspondent says the Italian Premier-designate, Signor Alcide de Gasperi, today began his second attempt to form his sixth coalition Cabinet since the war. His last Government resigned two weeks ago.

It is thought unlikely that a “repeater Premier ” would be able to draw into a new Cabinet all four of the parties which comprised his last. Two parties have already accepted the programme he has drawn up for the future—the Right Wing majority, the Christian Democrats (his own party), and the sparse Republicans—but the Liberals and Right Wing Socialists have both jibbed. The Liberals refused one main point of the programme outright, while the Socialists have called their National Council for tomorrow -to consider the programme as a whole. Signor de Gasperi was expected today to survey the whole party situation anew, awaiting the outcome of the Socialists’ assembly before making fresh proposals. He asked the President of the republic, Signor Luigi Einaudi, to relieve him of the task of cabinet-making, giving as his reason his difficulties with two of the former coalition parties, but the President persuaded him to continue.