Premier Romano Prodi on Thursday sailed through the first of two parliamentary votes allowing him to keep Italian peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan - a divisive issue for his fragile centre-left government.
The bill extending funding for the Afghan mission cleared the House by a vote of 524 for, three against and 19 abstentions, with the opposition joining the centre left in approving the package.
"I'm pleased - it couldn't have gone better," Prodi said afterwards.
Opposition chief Silvio Berlusconi, who was narrowly defeated by Prodi in last April's general election, said that "we gave our vote out of a sense of responsibility towards our troops".
The bill could nonetheless run into trouble in the Senate where Prodi's multi-party government hangs by a thread.
The opposition could refuse its help there in a bid to exploit Prodi's weak majority of just two Senate seats and dissent within his coalition over Afghanistan.
The premier briefly quit last month after a crisis sparked by foreign policy, particularly the Afghan mission.
Two rebel pacifist allies who are pushing for a troop withdrawal helped topple Prodi by refusing to support the government in a Senate foreign policy vote.
These two senators and several other pacifists have already threatened to vote against the Afghan decree.
Any defections in the Senate would make it very difficult for the government to pass the measure without the aid of the chamber's seven life senators or the opposition.
But this would be embarrassing for the premier and could lead to calls for a new government and possibly new elections, particularly coming so soon on the heels of February's crisis.
Three parties in Prodi's nine-way coalition - the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), the Communists' Party (PDCI) and the Greens - argue that Afghanistan has become too dangerous for peacekeeping.
While the parties renewed their pledge of support for Prodi during the recent crisis and toned down their criticism of the Afghan mission, the premier is still at the mercy of individual senators who could ignore their party line.
In Thursday's House vote, two of the three votes against the bill came from PRC MPs while a Green lawmaker refused to take part in the ballot.
OPPOSITION SAYS PRODI MUST BE SELF-SUFFICIENT IN SENATE.
Democratic Left Piero Fassino, whose party is the largest in government, remained confident that the centre left would win the Senate vote.
"I think there will be broad consensus in the Senate just as there was in the House," he said.
But Berlusconi's spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti said the centre left would "feel a wintery cold in the Senate because they don't have a majority there".
Gianfranco Fini, head of the rightist National Alliance and Berlusconi's biggest ally, said that "if the government is not self-sufficient in the Senate then it will create an enormous political problem".
"The majority cannot be called a majority (in the Senate) and if Prodi doesn't have the numbers on this upcoming ballot then we will be back to square one, even if there isn't another crisis and they prefer to pretend nothing has happened," the former foreign minister said.
The Senate vote will be held before the end of the month.
BILL DETAILS.
Italy has some 1,900 troops in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Escalating violence in the conflict-torn nation, including the kidnapping there earlier this week of an Italian journalist, risks fuelling opposition to the Afghan mission among Prodi's allies.
In a bid to appease pacifists and hard-leftists, the refinancing decree sets aside 500,000 euros for a peace conference on Afghanistan.
It also earmarks 40 million euros for cooperation initiatives.
In all, the decree approves more than one million euros for the year-long funding of all Italian peacekeeping missions abroad, including Afghanistan and Lebanon.
But Manuela Palermi, Senate whip for the Greens and the PDCI, demanded earlier this week that the government draw up a rapid exit strategy for Afghanistan.
When the refinancing issue last came up in July, Prodi was forced to resort to a do-or-die confidence vote to prevent pacifists sinking the measure.
Afghanistan has seen a major resurgence by Taliban Islamists whose government was toppled by US and allied Afghan forces in November 2001.
NATO is pressing its members to commit more troops to defeat the Taliban, which this week launched its biggest offensive since 2001.
