ROME, 22 February 2007 — Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has resigned in a meeting with the country’s president, who has accepted and will start consultations with political leaders, a political source told Reuters yesterday.

The source spoke shortly after the center-left prime minister left a meeting with President Giorgio Napolitano at which aides said he was expected to resign, after a major defeat in the Senate on foreign policy.

Divided over the Afghan war and ties with the US military, Prodi’s center-left government was unable to secure enough votes for a parliamentary motion backing Rome’s foreign policy.

There was no constitutional requirement for Prodi to step down. But Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema had said before the Senate vote that the government should resign if it did not command majority support on foreign policy.

President Giorgio Napolitano, the supreme arbiter of Italian politics, will now decide whether to accept the resignation.

Dissolving Parliament and calling an election is a radical option. Napolitano could take less dramatic steps including asking Prodi to test his majority with a confidence vote. He could also ask Prodi to form a new government or broker the formation of a different government.

The motion, a broadly worded declaration of support for foreign policy, received 158 votes in favor, below the necessary majority of 160 votes, and was followed by a chorus of opposition calls for the government to “quit, quit, quit.”

“We need to reflect now. We need to evaluate whether this is a political crisis or just a numeric one,” said Justice Minister Clemente Mastella after the vote.

Italy’s ruling coalition has only a one-seat majority in the Senate but in the past had managed to muster support by calling confidence votes.

The defeat was the most serious setback for Prodi’s nine-month-old coalition government, also deeply divided over a host of domestic issues ranging from the budget, pension reform and a bill giving legal recognition to gay and unwed couples.

Renato Schifani, Senate leader of the biggest opposition party, Forza Italia, held up a copy of yesterday’s La Stampa newspaper, which had quoted D’Alema’s warning to coalition pacifists who oppose Italy’s military presence in Afghanistan.

“I have in my hand one of the most important newspapers in the country with a declaration by Foreign Minister D’Alema: ‘Resignation if we have no majority’,” Schifani said to cheers from allies.

“There is no majority any more. There is no Prodi government any more. The Prodi government has fallen in this chamber.” The defeat was the most serious setback for Prodi’s nine-month-old coalition government, also deeply divided over a host of domestic issues ranging from the budget, pension reform and a bill giving legal recognition to gay and unwed couples.

More than a hundred opposition supporters gathered outside Prodi’s offices, calling for him to step down.

Earlier a political source in the Catholics-to-communists ruling coalition said he expected Prodi to survive the ordeal but said D’Alema, who is also deputy prime minister, would likely resign as foreign minister.

Beyond Afghanistan, where Italy has 1,900 troops on a NATO-led mission, one of the most divisive issues has been a plan to expand a US military base in northern Italy.

Protests against the plan drew tens of thousands of Italians, including some senior coalition members, last weekend.

D’Alema said the government was compelled to allow the base expansion. “Revoking the authorization would have been a hostile act on our part against the United States,” he said.

But one leftist senator announced he would resign rather than vote for D’Alema’s motion. “I am against the war in Afghanistan and against the US base in Vicenza,” said Franco Turigliatto, with the Communist Refoundation party.