Prodi Wins Vote

The Senate's make-or-break vote went in Prodi's favor by a margin of 162 to 157. Two senators whose votes were uncertain ahead of the ballot, independent Luigi Pollaro and opposition centrist Marco Follini, voted for Prodi. Four of Italy's seven unelected senators for life also gave him their support.

"I am very satisfied, now we'll go to the lower house," Prodi told reporters.

The 67-year-old former European Commission chief, serving his second stint as prime minister, is expected to sail through another vote in the Chamber of Deputies, where he has a comfortable majority, on Friday.

Prodi's fractious center-left coalition, which won a general election nine months ago by a hair's breadth, was thrown into crisis last week. Prodi resigned after losing a vote on foreign policy issues when two communist senators withheld support on Rome's peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, where nearly 2,000 Italian soldiers are stationed.

Like the Tower of Pisa

While the outcome of Wednesday's vote represented a political victory for Italy's embattled center-left leader, analysts noted that the government faced an uncertain future due to the wafer-thin nature of his support in the Senate.

"The government is like the Tower of Pisa: It leans, but it doesn't fall," said Justice Minister Clemente Mastella.

Had Prodi lost Wednesday's vote, he would have been constitutionally obliged to step down.

Taking the floor as the debate opened Wednesday, the prime minister back-pedalled on a bill that would grant legal status to unmarried couples, including gays.

In an apparent gamble aimed at garnering support from the Catholic centrists in his coalition and the opposition -- at the expense of far-left groups -- Prodi said that in presenting the bill to parliament, the government "has done its duty."

Poll: Italians want different answer

Playing on political fears that conservative Silvio Berlusconi would return to power, President Giorgio Napolitano renamed Prodi to his position and called for the confidence vote. Prodi rallied his coalition around a 12-point "non-negotiable" pact before agreeing to head a new government.

A poll published earlier on Wednesday showed that four in 10 Italians wanted Prodi to remain in power, with most speaking out for either a non-partisan technical government or snap elections, according to daily Corriere della Sera, which conducted the poll.

Some 39 percent said Prodi would last only a few months and 22 percent said he would not finish his five years in office but gave him one to two years of power.

Italy has a long history of revolving-door governments and Prodi's is the country's 59th since the post-World War II constitution was adopted.

The former European Commission head formally assumed power on May 17, 2006 at the helm of a broad nine-party coalition ranging from communists to Christian Democrats after defeating Berlusconi in the closest general election in modern Italian history.

Before the vote, Berlusconi said that even if Prodi won, it was unlikely his administration would last very long.