UPDATE - Italy’s deputy prime minister calls for snap elections

ADDS REMARKS FROM PRIME MINISTER CONTE

By Baris Seckin

ROME (AA) – Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Thursday called for early elections, citing the coalition government’s inability to agree on policy issues.

Tensions within the coalition of Salvini’s right-wing League party and the populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) have been high recently over an infrastructure project involving a high-speed rail link with France.

M5S presented a motion to kill the project, but it was rejected by the Senate with votes from League party lawmakers.

The two parties blamed each other for the deep divisions within the coalition, prompting Salvini to call for new elections.

He then met with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte for more than an hour.

In a statement after the meeting, Salvini said he had informed Conte that the government had lost its majority in parliament.

"Let's give the say back to the voters,” Salvini said in the statement.

M5S leader and Deputy Premier and Labor and Industry Minister Luigi Di Maio said his party is ready for snap elections.

But Di Maio said parliament should first approve reform that would reduce the number of parliamentarians in a vote scheduled for September before such polls are held.

Conte also commented on the issue.

"Salvini must justify to the voters who believed in the promise of change the reasons that led him to interrupt early and abruptly the work of government.

"It is not the duty of the interior minister to call the Parliament and Senate to a meeting or to decide the time of the political crisis. This institutional process should be before parliamentarians who are representatives of the nation. I promised that transparency and change would be the hallmark of this government, and I will keep it until the last day," he said.

M5S and the League party formed a coalition government on June 1, 2018 under the leadership of technocrat Prime Minister Conte.

*Writing by Busra Nur Bilgic Cakmak