Casellati consultations resume after first round hit wall

(ANSA) - Rome, April 19 - Senate Speaker Maria Elisabetta Casellati will hold a second round of talks on Thursday as part of a mandate handed her by President Sergio Mattarella to see if it is possible for her to break Italy's post-election political deadlock.
    Her 'exploratory' mandate involves verifying the possibility of seeing if it possible to form a government made up of the centre right, the coalition that came first in last month's inconclusive general election, and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), the biggest single party in the new parliament.
    The first round of talks with Casellati on Wednesday hit a brick wall when M5S leader Luigi Di Maio reiterated his refusal to form a government with the centre right as a whole and said he would only strike a deal with the anti-migrant, Euroskeptic League.
    Di Maio also gave League leader Matteo Salvini a one-week deadline to decide whether to dump his alliance partner, ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right Forza Italia, to make a deal possible.
    Casellati will hold talks with the leaders of the centre right, who will come together on Thursday after going separately as individual parties in Wednesday consultations, at 14:30.
    The Speaker, an FI member, is set to meet an M5S delegation at 17:30.
    Casellati must report back to Mattarella on Friday.
    League leader Matteo Salvini appealed for an end to bickering between political parties ahead of the talks. "Italy cannot wait," Salvini said in Catania on the fringes of meeting with workers for supermarket chain Auchan.
    "There are no developments. If everyone sticks to their positions, situations that there is no response to come about. "I'll see if I can cook up something on top of the lots that has already been given by the League.
    "We have contemplated being part of a government, overcoming the nos, the quarrels and the squabbles.
    "I don't lay down any ultimatums. Let's see if I can convince the others".
   A solution to Italy's post-election stalemate is swiftly needed, Premier Paolo Gentiloni said during a visit to Romania Thursday. "Italy cannot afford to stay out of the dynamics that are mapping the future of the EU and the EU cannot afford to face the debate without Italy," Gentiloni said on the day German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron are set to compare notes on EU reform.