Top human rights' group Amnesty International said on Friday that it had asked Italy to head a campaign for a worldwide ban on capital punishment.
Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan told reporters here that she had asked Premier Romano Prodi to adopt a "global strategy" aimed at bringing together states that were against the death penalty and isolating those that remained in favour.
"An international coalition for change is required, a group of champions, that's the challenge," said Khan, who is in Rome to present Amnesty's annual report on the death penalty and held talks with Prodi on Thursday.
Italy has long been active in the fight against capital punishment and has been lobbying governments to table a moratorium proposal at the United Nations, where Italy took up a non-permanent Security Council seat earlier this year.
Prodi said recently that Italy would seek the support of 85 UN countries which signed a non-binding declaration last December against capital punishment.
Prodi stressed that the backing of other European Union states was essential to the success of the initiative.
Campaigners were given a boost on Thursday when the European Parliament approved a new resolution supporting a global moratorium on the death penalty.
Khan said on Friday that she had "encouraged Prodi to continue the battle".
"I underscored the need for a diplomatic strategy that was not just centred on the EU," said Khan, who is the first woman, the first Asian and the first Muslim to helm the London-based organisation.
She described the death penalty as "morally wrong and juridically indefensible, as well as cruel and inhumane".
Amnesty's 2006 report said that the number of worldwide executions had fallen together with the number of countries that impose the death penalty.
It said 1,591 executions were reported last year compared to 2,148 in 2005.
The group said that some 99 countries have banned capital punishment while 69 still have it.
It said that six countries - China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan and the United States - accounted for 91% of all executions reported in 2006. SADDAM EXECUTION REVIVED ITALY CAMPAIGN.
The December execution of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein gave fresh impetus to the Italian campaign to get the death penalty abolished.
Prodi and other Italian political leaders, as well as the Vatican, strongly condemned the execution of Saddam, who was hanged after being convicted of crimes against humanity.
The Radical party, a small civil rights group in Prodi's nine-way governing coalition, is one of the most vocal and determined backers of the campaign.
The party's co-founder, veteran politician Marco Pannella, has staged several hunger strikes this year in a bid to activate full government support for the campaign.
Prodi subsequently pledged that Italy would use its new two-year Security Council seat to get a moratorium proposal back on track.
Since the war, Italian governments have taken an increasingly strong anti-death penalty stance and it presented moratorium proposals at the UN General Assembly in 1994 and 1995.
Last year MPs approved a cross-party motion urging the government to table another moratorium proposal but that initiative fell by the wayside amid disagreements with European Union partners.
It was an Italian, the philosopher and politician Cesare Beccaria, who made the first ever case against the death penalty.
Beccaria (1738 1794) condemned capital punishment and torture in his 1764 treatise Dei Delitti e Delle Pene (On Crimes and Punishments) which is considered a founding work in the field of criminology.
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was also the first state to permanently abolish the death penalty in 1786.
