Italian party would back even Bin Ladin for bridge

ROME, Feb 23 (Reuters) Politicians in Italy are used to forging Machiavellian alliances, but a party leader being wooed by acting Prime Minister Romano Prodi said he would work with absolutely anyone to get his main policy through.

Raffaele Lombardo, whose Autonomy Movement party has two senators and could help Prodi, who resigned on Wednesday, return to power, said he would only ally himself with a government that agreed to build a bridge linking Sicily to mainland Italy.

''If they offered me the Messina bridge, it's obvious I'd accept.'' Lombardo, a member of parliament and head of the provincial government of Catania in Sicily told Italian media in comments published today.

''With the bridge in the policy programme I'd even say yes to a government run by (Islamist militant Osama) Bin Laden.'' Prodi scrapped a 4.4 billion euro (5.77 billion dollars) plan to build a bridge over the Messina Strait -- a pet project of his predecessor Silvio Berlusconi, saying it was a waste of money and environmentally unsound.

It would have been the biggest suspension bridge in the world, spanning the 3.3 km (2 miles) of sea between Italy's toe and the island of Sicily, nearly three times the length of San Francisco's Golden Gate.

It was still unclear today if Prodi would be able to lure enough extra senators to his centre-left coalition to be able to return to power after his feeble majority in the upper house proved insufficient to back government foreign policy.

REUTERS SAM RK2228