ROME: Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday ended weeks of speculation by announcing he would run again for the job of prime minister, the post he was forced out of last year.
"I am running to win," the leader of the right-wing populist People of Freedom (PDL) party told journalists in Milanello, near the northern city of Milan.
He had called a meeting of the PDL for Sunday and had opened talks with his former coalition allies the Northern League to try to agree on a joint campaign backing a single candidate, he added.
"When I did sport, when I worked and studied, I never entered into a competition to be well-placed but always to win," he said.
"I hope to be in a position to be able to explain to Italians that there is a need for a force that enjoys a majority to change the rules of the constitution."
In the coming campaign he wanted to present several new faces, "because there are numerous people who have the right to feel tired," he added.
He had been in contact with a number of figures in the world of business, sport and university, he said.
"I hope to be in a position to be able to explain to Italians that there is a need for a force that enjoys a majority to change the rules of the constitution."
A general election is expected to be held in March or April of next year but the precise date has not been set, nor is there any agreement on a reform of an election law widely seen as unsatisfactory.
Berlusconi's announcement confirmed comments by leading members of his party and strong hints that he had himself made over the past few days.
In October, he had said that he would not run again for the premiership. On Wednesday evening however, the 76-year-old media tycoon said he had been assailed by requests to return to the field as soon as possible."
This will be his sixth bid to become prime minister, a post he has already held three times over a political career spanning two decades.
A parliamentary revolt forced him from office in November last year as he was fighting a series of scandals that had damaged his reputation and, said critics, the country's standing. The financial markets had reacted so badly that Italy was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
Mario Monti took over as prime minister at the head of an unelected government of technocrats. He set about introducing a policy of tax rises and austerity measures to get the economy under control.
On Thursday, PDL lawmakers abstained from confidence votes in the government to protest Monti's policies, but stopped short of bringing down the executive they have supported until now.
The renewed political tension has once again spooked the financial markets and Pier Luigi Bersani, the newly-nominated leader of the centre-left Democratic Party accused Berlusconi of "incoherence".
"It's clear that you have not reflected on past mistakes and that for you the Monti government has not been a transition but a parenthesis that opens and closes and everything is like before," he told PDL lawmakers in parliament.
"You are being irresponsible!" he said.
Responding on Saturday however, Berlusconi dismissed the criticism.
"Bersani has already started his election campaign and, so far as I am concerned, we have acted in a very responsible manner."
Bersani was voted in as the leader of the Democratic Party only last weekend. Recent opinion polls put him comfortably ahead in the run-up to the spring election.
Monti's government is in any case due to end its term of office next spring, but the PDL's change of tack has raised the possibility that it might not last that long.
President Giorgio Napolitano was due to meet Monti later Saturday for talks.
Napolitano has sought to reassure the public, describing recent developments as "pre-election tensions".
But it has been enough to shake the markets: the yields between benchmark Italian and German 10-year sovereign bonds at one point on Friday widened to 330 points, from around 300 points on Monday.
- AFP/fa
Italy's Berlusconi announces fresh run for PM
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Italy's Berlusconi announces fresh run for PM
