Italian Premier Romano Prodi said on Tuesday that his government would forge ahead with a controversial plan to give rights to unwed couples.
Equal Opportunities Minister Barbara Pollastrini said Prodi had told his cabinet during a morning meeting that he wanted a "wise and serious" law on the issue.
Pollastrini said last week that a draft bill would be ready by the end of January.
"The government's commitment to presenting such a bill by the end of January 2007 is an important development and one which will be respected," she said.
The issue of legal rights for cohabiting couples including same-sex ones is a highly divisive one in Catholic Italy.
Prodi, who won the April general election, promised in his election programme to introduce legislation akin to France's Civil Solidarity Pact (PACS), which grants cohabiting couples including homosexual ones similar administrative and financial benefits to married ones.
He has come under pressure from left-wing elements in his nine-way coalition to push ahead with such legislation following moves last week by a northern city to allow cohabiting couples to register as families.
The centre-left council of Padua approved a motion allowing unwed couples including same-sex ones to register with the city as "families based on ties of affection" and receive certificates attesting to their family status.
Such documents are required in Italy for certain administrative and legal procedures such as joining public housing waiting lists or obtaining rights to assist sick family members.
Cabinet members including Family Policy Minister Rosy Bindi subsequently said it was time for the government to quickly move forward on its pledge to bring in a law protecting the rights of unmarried couples.
But not all parties in Prodi's disparate nine-way coalition are in favour of the idea.
Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, who heads the tiny centrist, Catholic UDEUR party, has been a strong opponent, taking the Vatican line that a PACS-like law would undermine marriage and the traditional family model based on matrimony.
Mastella said on Friday that "the government won't fall on an issue like this... but the family is the family. Married couples are one thing and unmarried ones are another".
The centre-right opposition headed by former premier Silvio Berlusconi has also vowed to battle such a bill in parliament.
Berlusconi's Forza Italia party likened Prodi to Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who has brought in legislation legalising same-sex marriages in Spain.
Opposition Catholics called on like-minded members of the governing coalition to join forces with them in trying to sink any PACS-style bills.
Although Prodi enjoys a strong hold over the House, his majority in the Senate rests on just one seat, making it extremely difficult for his government to get reforms approved unless they are broadly backed.
But rightist National Alliance chief Gianfranco Fini, Berlusconi's main ally, appeared to extend a hand to the centre left on Monday by saying that "families must never be confused with unwed couples but people's rights must be protected".
"And that obviously goes for all people, including homosexuals," he added.
According to most recent available figures from national statistics bureau Istat, the number of unmarried couples living together in Italy doubled between 1994 and 2003 from 227,000 to 555,000.
Recent polls show that most Catholics in the country - 68.7% - are in favour of PACS-style legislation despite the repeated condemnation of Pope Benedict XVI.
A top Italian jurist pointed out earlier this year that unmarried heterosexual and gay couples in Italy had fewer legal rights than almost anywhere else in Europe.
