A televised election face-off between Premier Silvio Berlusconi and centre-left rival Romano Prodi got the green light Wednesday after Berlusconi made a key concession.
After days of intense debate and controversy, the premier said he would not hold a campaign-ending press conference - a forum Prodi had slammed as giving the premier an unacceptable advantage.
"I want to see if Prodi will keep running scared now," said the premier in announcing his decision.
"It was high time. We can arrange it now," responded Prodi.
Prodi's refusal was a protest over new pre-election rules which would allow Berlusconi to make an extra appeal to voters on the eve of the April 9 poll. "The idea that we hold a debate and then he, later on,
goes to do a final press conference, is laughable," the opposition leader said.
The centre-right, meanwhile, says that the rules simply revive a former custom for end-of-legislature press
conferences which gave the final word before elections to outgoing government leaders.
Prodi, who lead the centre left to victory in 2006, also says he has received insufficient guarantees from the RAI state broadcaster over the way the debate would be conducted.
The leaders will have two prime-time debates on public television RAI, according to a set format and schedule in the immediate run-up to the April 9 vote.
