Berlusconi denounces Italy election as fraudulent - Giuseppe Fonte
ROME (Reuters) - Defeated Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday denounced what he called widespread fraud at Italy's general election and demanded his center-left rival Romano Prodi be stripped of victory. Prodi immediately condemned Berlusconi's efforts to overturn the results of the April 9-10 election, the closest in modern Italian history, and his allies warned that the prime minister was stoking dangerous political tensions. The stand-off between the leaders of Italy's two main coalitions pushed Europe's fourth largest economy into uncharted waters and toward a full-blown crisis. "The election result has to change because there was widespread fraud," Berlusconi told reporters after meeting President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. "There was fraud that doesn't go in all directions. It just goes one way," he added, suggesting that the alleged ballot box irregularities had all been at the expense of his alliance.
Prodi, attending a victory rally in his home city of Bologna in northern Italy, dismissed the allegation. "We have won ... Berlusconi has to go," said Prodi, a former president of the European Commission whose victory has been acknowledged by France, Spain, Luxembourg and the European Commission but not Washington. (Berlusconi was one of the few US European allies in the war against Iraq)
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