Casellati meets centre-right alliance in bid to break post-election deadlock

Italian Senate speaker Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati was on Thursday due to hold talks with the centre-right alliance - which won most seats in last month's inconclusive national polls - in a bid to break the political deadlock over the formation of a government

Casellati's meeting with the three centre-right alliance parties - the far-right League, the conservative Forza Italia and the rightwing Brothers of Italy - comes after League leader Matteo Salvini shunned a private meeting on Wednesday with Casellati in what was interpreted as a show of solidarity with his alliance partners.

Casellati was later on Thursday scheduled to hold talks with the populist Five-Star Movement, which emerged as Italy's largest party in the 4 March ballot in which no single party or bloc won a clear majority.

The League and Five-Star made the strongest gains in the polls - at the expense of established parties including Forza Italia led by ex-premier and billionaire Silvio Berlusconi and the centre-left Democratic Party of ex-premier Matteo Renzi which came in a poor second.

Five-Star leader Luigi Di Maio and Salvini have both claimed first bid to try and form a government but negotiations on a coalition have floundered over Di Maio's refusal to govern with Berlusconi, who has a tax fraud conviction and who is on trial for bribery - charges he denies.

Salvini has urged Di Maio to drop his veto on Berlusconi and his demand that he become premier.

The Democratic Party has the numbers in parliament to play kingmaker but has vowed to go into opposition after its worst-ever election result and has so far rejected appeals from Five-Star to discuss a possible coalition.

After two rounds of talks with party leaders held this month by Italy's president Sergio Mattarella failed to end the political stalemate he asked Casellati on Wednesday to hold two days of talks to explore the scope for a deal between the centre-right alliance and Five-Star.

Casellati, 71, is a senior member of Forza Italia and is close to Berlusconi. She is Italy's second highest office-bearer after Mattarella.

Italy - the eurozone's third largest economy - has been under a caretaker government since the election.