Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resorted to a confidence vote Wednesday to push a bill through parliament for the first time since winning power, exposing his fragile hold over a fractious coalition.

Prodi easily won the vote on a routine administrative bill but serious policy splits in his center-left coalition mean he is likely to use the tactic again in the coming days, including on a vote on keeping troops in Afghanistan.

The government said Wednesday's confidence vote, a move that whips dissenting coalition members into line due to the threat of government collapse, was just to speed the bill through. But the opposition said it showed Prodi's weakness.

"It's not the first and it won't be the last abuse of power," said Paolo Guzzanti, a senator for Forza Italia, the opposition party led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Using confidence votes to avoid lengthy parliamentary debate and force through laws is nothing new in Italy, Berlusconi used well over 30 of them during his five years in power.

But Prodi's supporters fear coalition divisions may force him to make the humiliating step of putting an important foreign policy issue the financing of overseas military missions including Italy's troops in Afghanistan to a confidence vote.

Two government parties, Communists and pacifists, are opposed to the presence of 1,300 Italian soldiers in Afghanistan and want them pulled out in the same way troops will withdraw from Iraq before the end of the year.

(China Daily June 29, 2006)