President Napolitano of Italy has begun crisis talks after the dramatic resignation of Romano Prodi as Prime Minister after only nine months in office.

Mr Prodi stepped down last night after losing a key parliamentary vote over his Government’s pro-US foreign policy, including proposals to keep Italian troops in Afghanistan.

Mr Napolitano has accepted Mr Prodi’s resignation, but he will remain in a caretaker role until a way out of the crisis is found and may be subsequently asked to remain in office if the parties in his centre-left coalition can find enough common ground to carry on.

The emergency talks at the presidential palace – expected to run until tomorrow evening - involve Mr Prodi and the President meeting with leaders of the factions in the nine-party coalition in order to work a way out of the crisis. Mr Napolitano today met with parliament speakers and is set tomorrow to talk to party leaders and former presidents.

As well as calling on Mr Prodi to be reinstated, the President could ask another leader from the centre-left coalition to form a government, if they were able to muster enough support for a parliamentary majority.

Alternatively, Mr Napolitano could ask a veteran figure, considered above the political fray, to form a government, or dissolve parliament altogether and call new elections. But the President is thought unlikely to favour the last option, in what remains a deeply divided nation.

Aides to Mr Prodi said that Mr Napolitano could ask him to try to form a new government, either with a different coalition or with the same partners but a different distribution of portfolios.

Dario Franceschini, a coalition leader, claimed that the coalition parties — which range from Catholics to communists — were “ready to reaffirm their full faith” in Mr Prodi. And the premier’s spokesman, Silvio Sircan, added today: “Prodi is willing to stay if, and only if, he receives guarantees of full support from all coalition parties.”

However, Paolo Mieli, the editor of the influential daily Corriere della Sera, said that it was difficult to see how a new Prodi coalition could resolve the tensions within the Centre Left that have bedevilled him since he narrowly won elections last April. A “Prodi-Mark II” Government might be even weaker, he said.

The crisis erupted after several senators on the Left deserted Mr Prodi, leaving him without enough Senate votes to approve the continuing commitment to Italian troop deployments in Afghanistan and the expansion of a US military base at Vicenza. The foreign policy fell two short of the 160 required. The governing coalition has had a Senate majority of a single vote.

Silvio Berlusconi, the opposition leader, who was ousted at the last general election, said that the Prime Minister was “obliged” to step down. “Foreign policy involves the role and image of Italy in the world and the life of our soldiers committed to international peace missions,” he said.

The issue was not, technically, a vote of no confidence. But the Foreign Minister, Massimo D’Alema, had offered a hostage to fortune when he said that the Government should quit if it could not command a majority in such a key vote.

After an emergency Cabinet meeting, Mr Prodi consulted President Napolitano about whether his Government could continue. The President has the power to call new elections, ask Mr Prodi to try to continue or ask another centre-left leader or a non-party “technocrat” to try to form a government. Clemente Mastella, the Justice Minister, said that one way out of the crisis would be for the Government to call a confidence vote in both Houses of Parliament.

He said that that would show whether the Government had lost its overall majority or had merely lost on a single issue. “We need to check if those who have shown uncertainty or said ‘No’ today will say ‘No’ to the Government per se,” he said.

Mr D’Alema’s tactic was to bring into line pacifists on the Left. The gamble failed, however, despite an eloquent hour-long speech by Mr Prodi pleading for unity.

The often-turbulent coalition has lost several Senate votes on minor issues, but until yesterday had scraped through important votes despite its wafer-thin majority — sometimes with help from the handful of unelected life senators.

But yesterday Giulio Andreotti, a life senator and former prime minister, who had indicated that he would vote in favour of troops in Afghanistan, abstained, while another life senator, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, a former president, who normally backs the Government, was absent because of illness.

Some opinion polls put support for the Centre Right at 57 per cent, with the Centre Left on 42 per cent, a reflection of disillusionment with the Government’s squabbles over issues from homosexual civil unions to the economy. However, a poll in La Repubblica yesterday said that 56 per cent of Italians approved of the Government’s foreign policy, with 29 per cent disapproving and 15 per cent holding no firm view.

Mr Prodi was last in office between 1996 and 1998, but was brought down on that occasion too by hard-left allies.

Pier Ferdinando Casini, a centre-right leader, said that Mr Prodi was “pretending not to see” the problems of mustering a majority to stay in power. “If he wants to go ahead, good luck to him, but the country is paying the price,” he said.

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