The Italian government said on Tuesday that it would lobby the United Nations for a worldwide end to capital punishment following a domestic outcry over the execution of former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.
Centre-left Premier Romano Prodi issued a statement saying that Italy intended to "launch formal procedures... for the UN to urgently consider the issue of a global moratorium on the death penalty".
Italy joined the UN Security Council on Monday, taking up one of ten non-permanent seats in the organisation's top decision-making body - a seat which it will hold for two years.
Prodi and other Italian leaders, as well as the Vatican, have strongly condemned the execution of Saddam, who was hanged in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad at dawn on Saturday after being convicted of crimes against humanity.
The Italian premier said at the weekend that Saddam should not have been executed despite his crimes.
"No crime can justify one person killing another. That is a principle which all civilisations and religions share and is the only one on which it is possible to build solid and lasting peace," the former European Commission chief said.
Prodi has also come under pressure from the Radicals, a tiny party in his nine-way governing coalition which is against capital punishment.
Radical veteran Marco Pannella has been on a hunger strike for the past week in protest at Saddam's death sentence and in order to convince the government to lead a renewed push for UN action against the death penalty.
Doctors have urged Pannella to give up his hunger strike, saying the 70-year-old politician will soon have to be hospitalised.
Italy has in the past been active in campaigning against the death penalty, presenting moratorium proposals at the United Nations Assembly in 1994 and 1995.
Last July, the Italian House approved a cross-party motion urging the government to table another moratorium proposal at the UN before the end of 2006.
Although the motion called for a unilateral resolution, the government failed to follow through on the request, citing an inability to agree with its European Union partners.
Hard-right MP Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, said on Tuesday that images of Saddam's execution had reminded her of her grandfather, who was hung up by his heels in a Milan square after being executed by partisans in 1945.
In an interview with Italian daily La Repubblica, Mussolini said that "the death penalty should be firmly condemned by all political sides otherwise history has taught us nothing".
"I found the killing of Saddam disgusting and shameful... Even though he was a bloody and ruthless dictator, it made me sick and angry," she said.
