Italy parliament to start vote on president

ROME, May 8 (Reuters) Italian parliamentarians start voting for a head of state today after incoming Prime Minister Romano Prodi's centre-left proposed a new candidate to try to avoid a lengthy battle with the outgoing centre-right.

The first round of voting begins at (1930 ist) but many analysts believe no winner will emerge before Wednesday's fourth ballot, when the number of votes needed falls from a two-thirds majority of the electors to an absolute majority.

The 1,010 ''grand electors'', made up of lawmakers and regional representatives, will choose a successor to President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, whose 7-year-term is about to expire.

Prodi, whose coalition won last month's elections by a slim margin, will not be able to form his government before the election of the new president, who will formally give him the mandate. It took 13 days to elect Ciampi's predecessor in 1992.

Prodi late yesterday put forward 80-year-old Giorgio Napolitano as a compromise. Outgoing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had turned down Prodi's first proposal, Massimo D'Alema, a former prime minister who is chairman of the Democrats of the Left (DS).

Napolitano also belongs to the ex-communist DS, but while the 57-year-old D'Alema is seen as a divisive, combative figure, Napolitano is an elder statesman and life senator who Prodi hopes will be viewed as less partisan.

He is a former lower house speaker and interior minister.

The president is traditionally meant to be a widely respected figure above party politics.

It was not clear if all of Berlusconi's centre-right bloc would accept Napolitano, who was not among a list of candidates they had proposed to Prodi as negotiable.

Berlusconi had rejected D'Alema outright, saying an ex-communist for president would be an ''indecent proposal''.

While Prodi could use his slim majority to push though his own man, that would increase the bitterness between the two camps and could make it even harder for him to carry through his reform policies.

Napolitano's name emerged after a day of frantic negotiations between the two sides.

Prodi is under pressure from the DS to propose one of their own for the job because the party failed to win the speakership of either house of parliament and feels it is due a prestigious post.

During a meeting with centre-left leaders, Berlusconi's allies put forward four names but none of them were from the DS, the largest party in the centre-left.

They included former prime ministers Giuliano Amato and Lamberto Dini, as well as former European Commissioner Mario Monti.

REUTERS DKS KP1440