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Italian Premier Forms Rightist Government

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

After prolonged haggling with ambitious, suspicious allies, Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire turned politician, announced the formation Tuesday of the first right-wing Italian government since World War II.

Berlusconi, the 57-year-old political newcomer who is one of Italy’s richest men, will be sworn in this morning as prime minister of the 53rd postwar government in Italy and the first with neo-fascist representation.

Meeting with President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro after 11 days of wide-ranging talks and last-minute horse-trading, Berlusconi presented a Cabinet that he called “a good team . . . above reproach.”

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Two deputy prime ministers represent controversial allies who stormed to victory with Berlusconi in March elections driven by voter disgust with institutionalized corruption.

“I’ll try to bring to government what I have learned in business all these years,” Berlusconi said.

His holdings include supermarkets, three national television stations, magazines, real estate and Italy’s best soccer team. They reportedly did $7 billion in business last year and have a collective debt of about $2.3 billion.

In presenting his government, Berlusconi said he is sure he can win required votes of confidence in both houses of the Italian Parliament.

Roberto Maroni--of the federalist Northern League and a stand-in for League founder Umberto Bossi--was named to the key Interior (Police) Ministry as well as to the deputy premiership. The League seeks a federal, decentralized Italy, and Bossi on occasion has talked of splitting the country into three federal republics: north, central and south.

Giuseppe Tatarella of the neo-fascist National Alliance became the other deputy prime minister, as well as minister of post and telecommunications. Tatarella thus became the first of the political heirs of former dictator Benito Mussolini to hold Cabinet rank in half a century. Like Bossi, controversial neo-fascist leader Gianfranco Fini did not seek a Cabinet post.

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Nervousness over the unabashed right-wing nature of the government triggered an unprecedented letter to Berlusconi from Scalfaro on Tuesday. The Italian president, who is at least nominally above politics, reminded the Milan tycoon that his government is constitutionally obliged to respect the democratic institutions of an indivisible republic.

Scalfaro asked Berlusconi to form a government on April 28. It took 11 days principally because of Bossi’s demands that the powerful Interior Ministry should go to his party. Neither Berlusconi nor Fini liked the idea.

Bossi threatened to withdraw from the coalition and railed against potential conflicts of interest in Berlusconi’s assumption of political power atop his economic clout--a concern that is still paramount among opposition parties.

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