In this story:

• D'Alema meets Monday with Scalfaro
• Looking for a majority
• 'Children of a lesser god'
• Related stories and sites

ROME (CNN) -- After a series of closed-door meetings with potential coalition partners Saturday, leftist political leader and one-time communist Massimo D'Alema is expressing optimism that he will be able to form Italy's next government.

"The conditions are there to go forward," he said. "The framework is complex, because it's clear we are dealing with political forces that have had different experiences and will have differing ideas about the evolution of the political system and Italian democracy."

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CNN's Gayle Young reports from Italy
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But the leader of the country's center-right opposition, Silvio Berlusconi, is demanding that President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro call new parliamentary elections, saying D'Alema was trying to build a majority "of convenience."

"(He is) practicing the methods communism has always used to win power -- taking advantage of traveling companions whom history then defines as useful idiots," Berlusconi said.

The Vatican, too, appears to be unhappy with Scalfaro's decision Friday to ask D'Alema to try to form a new government, which would make him the first former communist to serve as Italian prime minister.

On Saturday, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper, cited the "hard-fought victory of liberty and democracy over communism" and noted D'Alema was "from the apparatus of the former Italian Communist Party" who once edited the party's daily newspaper.

D'Alema meets Monday with Scalfaro

D'Alema -- a pragmatist who earlier this decade helped take the West's largest communist party and transform it into the more moderate Democratic Party of the Left -- is trying to piece together a parliamentary majority.

He said he hopes that on Monday he'll be able to present Scalfaro with a political accord signed by enough parties to command a majority.

It would likely include members of the center-left Olive Tree coalition, of which his party is the largest member; the centrist UDR party; and a breakaway faction from the hard-left Communist Refoundation party.

D'Alema's dilemma appears to be how to build a government with both the UDR and the breakaway communists, who have widely divergent views.

Looking for a majority

The small faction of communists, led by Armando Cossutta, are pushing for a reduction in the work week from 40 to 35 hours and want to be among the new government's Cabinet ministers.

The UDR, led by Francesco Cossiga , who served as president from 1985 to 1992 as a member of the anti-communist Christian Democrats, is pushing for constitutional reform.

Olive Tree and the UDR together hold enough seats to form a majority without Cossutta's communists. However, without UDR, Olive Tree and Cossutta would not command a majority.

Cossiga's forces were originally loyal to Berlusconi, who expressed indignation that they might now consider turning and joining a D'Alema government. He charged that the UDR deputies were "elected by moderate voters who mandated these gentlemen to do the exact opposite of what they're now doing."

'Children of a lesser god'

Until the Cold War ended, one of the guiding principles of Italy's political system was to keep the powerful Communist Party out of national power, though it did control some regional governments.

Just four days ago, D'Alema downplayed his chances of ever being prime minister, calling ex-communists "children of a lesser god."

But Scalfaro, trying to avoid calling new elections, turned to D'Alema after Prodi tried and failed to muster a new majority in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies.

Prodi's 2 1/2-year-old government fell after Communist Refoundation hard-liners pulled out of the governing coalition, because of a 1999 budget plan they found too austere.

Rome Bureau Chief Gayle Young and Reuters contributed to this report.