Maria Sanminiatelli
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/ 11 April 2006

Italy heads towards split Parliament

The Italian elections split the nation in half, with a bitterly contested race failing to produce a clear winner in Parliament on Tuesday, more than 12 hours after polls closed, and threatening a new season of political instability. Near-final returns on Tuesday showed Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservatives holding a razor-thin lead in the Senate and Romano Prodi’s center-left winning the lower house by the smallest of margins.