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Italian PM loses confidence vote, will resign

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  • NEW: Italian prime minister loses confidence vote in upper house of parliament
  • NEW: With loss, PM Romano Prodi will have to resign
  • Prodi's coalition government had been teetering
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ROME, Italy (CNN) -- Italy's prime minister lost a confidence vote Thursday in the Senate and will be resigning his office.

Romano Prodi, in office for 20 months, had only a slim chance of surviving the vote. Observers had said a Senate loss could spell a new period of instability in Italian politics.

Addressing senators before the vote, Prodi asked them to back him so he can continue to implement the reforms introduced by his government. He said the Italian economy had been improving under his mandate.

Prodi acknowledged that he would have to make some changes in his leadership, but he told the senators that the country needed continuity in government and that his was legitimately elected by the people.

The prime minister lost his razor-thin majority Monday when a centrist party in his center-left coalition withdrew its support. The move wiped out the government's one-vote majority in the Senate.

Prodi met Thursday morning with President Giorgio Napolitano, after which he decided to go ahead with the Senate vote Thursday evening.

Knowing he faced likely rejection, Prodi could have decided to resign before the vote. His decision to go ahead with it was seen by some as a complicated political gamble.

Now that Prodi has lost the Senate vote, Napolitano could name a new prime minister, but he will most likely call for snap elections. It is a scenario that Prodi's Senate foes have said they want to avoid.

Napolitano, too, may hope to stave off elections so he can instead work on reforming Italian electoral law. Among the changes would be limiting the ability of small parties to threaten coalition governments by dragging them through a series of confidence votes.

That is what sparked Prodi's problems in the first place.

Last week, Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, of the centrist Udeur Party, resigned after he was put under investigation, and his wife was placed under house arrest, for alleged corruption. Both deny any wrongdoing.

Mastella then complained that his government colleagues had failed to support him, so he withdrew his party from the coalition.

Prodi took office after one of the closest-fought elections in Italian history. He was forced to resign in February 2006 but was reinstated after a Senate confidence vote. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

CNN's Alessio Vinci and Hada Messia contributed to this report.

All About Romano ProdiGiorgio NapolitanoItalyPolitics

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