President Giorgio Napolitano resumed consultations with Italy's political parties on Monday, hearing deeply contrasting views on what to do following Romano Prodi's resignation as premier.
Napolitano must decide whether to dissolve parliament and hold elections immediately or ask an institutional figure to form an interim government which would be tasked with electoral and possibly other reforms.
''We asked the Head of State for an interim government to unblock the electoral law,'' said Franco Giordano, head of the Communist Refoundation Party, one of the parties which supported Prodi's centre-left government.
Pier Ferdinando Casini, head of the centrist UDC, an opposition party, was also against immediate elections: ''A country on its knees needs a government of pacification, involving the most responsible people in the centre-left and the centre right''.
But he said that if that were not possible, then the president should call elections ''straight away''.
Two other opposition parties, the right-wing National Alliance (AN) and the regionalist Northern League, said they opposed any sort of interim administration and had urged Napolitano to call elections.
''We asked the president to recognise the need to end the legislature, to dissolve parliament and let voters decide,'' said AN leader Gianfranco Fini.
''The system is stuck,'' said Roberto Maroni, part of the Northern League delegation to the presidential palace. ''The longer we wait to go to the polls, the more damage the country has to face''.
Napolitano closes his consultations on Tuesday, when he will meet the Forza Italia party of former centre-right premier Silvio Berlusconi and the centre-left Democratic Party led by Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni.
Over the weekend Berlusconi publicly urged the president to call elections, saying that unless he did so ''millions of people will pour onto the streets of Rome''.
This declaration irritated the president, who saw it as amounting to undue pressure on him in his constitutional role as decision-maker in the current situation, several newspapers reported on Monday.
Veltroni, meanwhile, called for an interim government lasting 8-10 months to agree and approve reforms of the electoral system and of parliament itself, cutting the number of MPs and giving more power to the premier.
Veltroni has said the PD party will run alone in the next elections, implicitly breaking the alliance which tied it to the PRC, the second biggest leftwing party, during the Prodi government.
Analysts in the Italian media said on Monday that in the light of Berlusconi's refusal to consider an interim government the chances of avoiding elections - as Napolitano had hoped - were dwindling.
''Our partners in Europe are wondering if this ungovernable, rowdy and riotous country is an acceptable working partner. Perhaps it's better to end this ugly struggle with elections, as soon as possible,'' said an editorial in the Corriere della Sera daily.
Napolitano started his consultations on Friday by talking to parliamentary speakers and continued on Saturday by meeting the leaders of small parties.
He is scheduled to wind the process up on Tuesday by conferring individually with his predecessors: Francesco Cossiga, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
