Craxi Offers Plan on Alternating Premiership to End Italy Crisis

Prime Minister-designate Bettino Craxi on Friday reported to President Francesco Cossiga on a compromise plan aimed at ending Italy’s month-old government crisis.

Craxi met with Cossiga for about 30 minutes to outline a proposal to alternate the premiership between the Socialists and the Christian Democrats until the next scheduled elections in June, 1988.

Under the compromise, Craxi, 52, would remain prime minister until the Socialist Party National Congress in March, 1987. At that point he would hand over the premiership to the Christian Democrats, Italy’s largest party.

Craxi did not speak to reporters after his meeting with Cossiga at the presidential Quirinale Palace. Cossiga aides issued a brief statement saying only that the two men had met and that Craxi had told Cossiga “about the accomplishment of the task he was charged with”--governmental jargon meaning that Craxi expects to be able to reassemble his five-party coalition.

Partners to Meet Tuesday

Coalition party leaders--Socialists, Christian Democrats, Liberals, Republicans and Social Democrats--are scheduled to meet Tuesday to approve the compromise plan formally. Following that approval, Craxi would meet again with Cossiga to tell him his bid had succeeded.

Since Cossiga never formally accepted Craxi’s June 27 resignation, the president could tell the Socialist leader simply to take his coalition back to Parliament for confidence votes that would confirm it in office.

Or Craxi could form a new government that would be virtually a carbon copy of the old one.

Craxi told Socialist Party leaders Friday that the compromise he has agreed upon with the Christian Democrats would keep government policy on the same track until the 1988 elections, “avoiding traumatic interruptions and early elections.”

A long-simmering feud between the Socialists and the Christian Democrats over who should be sitting in the prime minister’s seat caused the crisis. The Christian Democrats worried that if Craxi kept the post until the next elections, the Socialists might make election gains at Christian Democrat expense.