ITALY: Summer Replacement

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After fussing and feuding through their longest government-making crisis since World War II, Italy's politicians handed the job of putting together a Cabinet to a long-jawed lawyer from the mountain town of Ascoli Piceno. Dour and taciturn, Fernando Tambroni, 58, is a staunch conservative who has been in and out of Christian Democratic governments for seven years, most recently as the Finance Minister whose hardfisted fiscal policies have helped make the lira one of the world's soundest currencies. On his first try over three weeks ago, Tambroni offered a rightist Cabinet dependent on neo-Fascist votes in the Assembly, but many of his fellow Christian Democrats found such a naked lash-up with the Fascists obnoxious.

Last week as pressing business piled up, Tambroni returned to win a 128-110 majority in the Senate. "My government will be transitory," he said. Tambroni's Cabinet is still dependent on neo-Fascists in the Assembly, but has pledged to confine itself to housekeeping. Supported by an expanding economy, it will concentrate on getting a budget passed, keep the ministries manned through the summer of Rome's Olympic Games.