Foreign under-secretary Ricardo Merlo on Friday praised Italy's president Sergio Mattarella for his "precious" role in helping steer the country out of its latest political crisis after caretaker premier Giuseppe Conte's third coalition government collapsed.
"Thanks to President Mattarella for his precious work, we trust the head of state's wisdom will unravel the tangle of this government crisis as soon as possible. Italy needs to fly," Merlo tweeted.
Mattarella on Friday gave Italy's lower house of parliament speaker Roberto Fico "an exploratory" mandate to broker talks between the four centre-left parties that made up the last ruling coalition and to report back to him on Tuesday if it can be reborn.
Mattarella said it was apparent from three days of talks with Italy's numerous political parties that there was "the prospective for a political majority, made up of the groups" that backed Conte's just-ended government.
Conte resigned on Monday after his third coalition government lost its Senate majority when volatile former premier Matteo Renzi's Italy Alive party withdrew from the cabinet over policy differences on how to spend some 209 billion euros of European funds to aid the country's economic recovery from the Coronavirus pandemic.
