Bush calls to congratulate Italy's Prodi on victory

US President George W. Bush called Romano Prodi on Friday to congratulate him on his victory in last week's narrow Italian elections, as Bush's friend and ally, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, continued to leave the door open to a grumpy defeat.

"I haven't done it, and I won't do it," Berlusconi said in Trieste, in the northeast, referring to whether he would concede defeat and follow Bush's lead and call Prodi. "It is Prodi who should call me to say he is sorry."

As he has since the close of voting last week, Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, continued to speak of election fraud and demands for further recounts. For all his intransigence, however, he appeared to soften the slightest bit, even if some astute reading between the lines was needed to detect it.

Meeting with supporters in Trieste, he spoke of a government led by Prodi as "only a parenthesis," suggesting that he was, in fact, resigned to the transfer of power. And he said he would let the president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, make a final proclamation on the election's verdict. Ciampi has already made clear his belief that Prodi won, as has Italy's highest court.

In most European countries, a congratulatory call from a US president after an election is a mere formality. But in Italy -- given its closeness to the US and Berlusconi's closeness to Bush, personally and through his support in Iraq -- the call seemed a decisive signal that Berlusconi's defiance could not last long.

"The president said he looks forward to working with him, and looked forward to seeing him again soon," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said of the phone call to Prodi that Bush made on Air Force One while flying to California. "And the prime minister-elect expressed his appreciation for the call."

Prodi, who studied and taught in the US at Harvard, Stanford and elsewhere, has said that Italy will maintain its strong ties to the US. But his vision is oriented more toward Europe, and he has been a strong critic of Bush and the war in Iraq.