1 Battles to redraw political alliances threatened to pull apart a key centrist party Saturday as members split over whether to join a movement to challenge former Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
2 The Italian Popular Party has become a small but strategic prize in the scramble to prepare for the next elections, which could come in the spring.
3 The party's importance rose Friday after the former head of the state-run industrial conglomerate, Romano Prodi, announced a bid to lead a center-left election alliance against Berlusconi.
4 But the Popular Party is also being courted by Berlusconi's conservative bloc to help fill the void left by the Northern League, which broke from Berlusconi's government and forced his resignation Dec. 22.
5 Rifts in the Popular Party were clearly widening Saturday.
6 A former party leader, Mino Martinazzoli, welcomed Prodi's plan as a way to bring the party back from 'the fringe.'
7 'Prodi's proposal gives us the possibly of a compass to follow,' he said at a meeting of party members near Brescia.
8 A document approved at the meeting called Prodi's proposal 'good news and a significant opportunity.'
9 But in Naples, another group of Popular Party members fell in line behind the party leader, Rocco Buttiglione, who appears interested in testing a possible link with Berlusconi.
10 'The future of our party is at stake,' said Beniamino Andreatta, the leader of the party's parliamentary bloc.
11 The Popular Party -- built from the wreckage of the scandal-toppled Christian Democrats -- hold just 33 seats in the 630-seat lower house of parliament. But the next could election could hinge on a very narrow margin between Berlusconi's bloc and opponents led by the Northern League and former Communists.
12 No date has been set for elections, which are months away at the earliest. Premier Lamberto Dini has indicated he would step down once his gets his deficit-cutting programs under way.
13 Prodi, 55, twice headed Italy's giant but debt-ridden holding company, Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, or IRI. He also served as industry minister in 1978 in a government headed by former Christian Democrat Premier Giulio Andreotti.

Battles to redraw political alliances threatened to pull apart a key centrist party Saturday as members split over whether to join a movement to challenge former Premier Silvio Berlusconi .
Battles to redraw political alliances
Which parties?