The Missoulian from Missoula, Montana • 7

Missoulian, Wednesday, April 12, 2006 A7 WORLD Results show center-left challenger wins Italian election Incumbent conservative premier demands recount By ALESSANDRA RIZZO Associated Press ROME Center-left economist Romano Prodi emerged the winner of Italy's election by a razor-thin margin Hiesday, promising to form a strong government able to run a deeply divided country mired in economic stagnation. But Premier Silvio Berlusconi claimed voting irregularities and demanded a recount. The dispute could usher in a period of uncertainty over the results, a process which could take weeks. The outcome of the election must be approved by Italy's highest court, and it is up the president to give the head of the winning coalition a mandate to form a government Even if the result is confirmed, prospects of a stable government under Prodi look cloudy at best. Many fear a return to the political chaos that has characterized Italian history since the end of World War II.

There have been 60 governments in about as many years. In addition to a weak popular mandate, Prodi would preside over a potentially unwieldy coalition. The center-left, while built on two mainstream parties, includes a mixed group of smaller formations ranging from Catholics to communists. giving him the margin he needs to control both houses of Italy's parliament. In the 315-member Senate, official returns showed Prodi with 158 seats to 156 for the center-right, and one independent.

But Berlusconi, speaking of the vote abroad, said "there are many irregularities and, therefore, it's possible that this is not a vote we can say is valid." Oddly enough, Berlusconi's conservative forces had pushed through the law giving the overseas Italians the right to vote in 2001 in one of its first pieces of legislation. The law created four huge electoral districts to represent overseas Italians, giving them 12 new seats in the lower Chamber of us to govern," Prodi said. Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul who has served as premier for the past five years, refused to concede defeat for his center-right coalition. "Nobody now can say they have won," he said. Prodi said he was not worried by a recount and described Berlusconi's complaints as "out of line." The public statements by the two candidates capped a day of confusion after millions of Italians voted Sunday and Monday at the end of a bitter campaign.

Official results by the Interior Ministry showed Prodi's coalition winning four of the six seats in the Senate elected by Italians living abroad, 7 students killed as rocket slams into Afghan school near U.S. base '-'Kiwi i iwwtfgwa wt ma msmm leL i i niMii-MiMMiMB' -ii It i ma'mitutit Iiib im in a steep river valley about half a mile from a U.S. base, which frequently draws militant fire. Coalition helicopters patrolled the area after the attack. After hearing the blast, distraught parents rushed to the school.

Hundreds of boys aged from 6 to 16 were in the courtyard at the time of the missile strike, witnesses said. Pools of blood soaked into the clay ground and shoes and pieces of bloody clothing were scattered about. "I saw so many children on the ground. Many were not moving. Screams were coming from everywhere.

I was crying," 12-year-old student Omar Sahib said. "One teacher was lying there without a leg." Hasan said many of the students were studying outside because the school in Asadabad, 105 miles northeast of the capital, Kabul, does not have enough classrooms. "Shrapnel from the rocket slashed through the children," By NIMATULLAH KARYAB Associated Press ASADABAD, Afghanistan A rocket exploded in a school yard in eastern Afghanistan Tuesday, killing seven students and wounding 34 other people in an attack possibly aimed at a nearby U.S. military base, officials said. The tragedy was the deadliest in a string of assaults on Afghanistan's education system since the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime was ousted by a U.S.-led coalition after the Sept.

11 attacks. Local police commander Mohammed Hasan accused the Taliban of targeting the boys school in the town of Asadabad in Kunar province. But a purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammed Yousaf, denied involvement. "We do not kill innocent -children. This is not our work," he said.

Salabagh School is located Berlusconi Prodi Prodi, a former Italian premier and European Union chief, played down the divisions within his coalition. He said previous governments have been weaker and called his alliance "politically and technically strong." "We have won after an intense battle, but we have a majority both in the Senate and in the lower house that allows conference, adding that the circle around Provenzano had been tightening since his surreptitious trip a few years ago to a medical clinic in France. Grasso said the mobster was being protected by politicians and businessmen. Provenzano was found in a rundown farmhouse with sheep corralled outside and a single bed within, according to a source in Sicily familiar with the arrest operation. He was sitting at a typewriter when police burst in, with a white scarf around his neck that he apparently used to conceal a telltale scar.

After realizing he could not escape, he acknowledged to police who he was, said the source, who requested anonymity. It was his penchant for communicating with his followers through small notes that finally did him in, authorities said. Law enforcement investigators followed couriers handling the delivery of several notes, some hidden in packages of clothes from a laundering service run by his family. One such package was tracked from the family home in Corleone to Provenzano's hide-out just a couple of miles away. LUCA BRUNOAuoclattd Pru Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano is escorted by a black-hooded police officer as he enters a Police building in downtown Palermo, Sicily, on Tuesday, Italian authorities track down reputed Cosa Nostra godfather Deputies and six in the Senate.

Prodi can count on a comfortable majority in the Chamber of Deputies, despite the narrowest of winning margins 49.8 percent for his coalition compared to 49.7 percent for Berlusconi's. Thanks to a new, fully proportional electoral system pushed through by the conservatives against the center-left's opposition, the winning coalition in the lower house gets at least 340 deputies, or 55 percent of seats, regardless of its margin of victory. But with Prodi's coalition winning the lower house by about 25,000 out of the 38 million votes cast, Berlusconi called for a recount. he said. Kunar Gov.

Asadullah Wafa said many of the 34 wounded were taken to the coalition base's hospital. U.S. military commander Maj. Gen. Benjamin C.

Freakley said the attack "clearly demonstrates the enemy's complete disregard for the Afghan people." Kunar is home to several militant groups, including al-Qaida, the Taliban and insurgents loyal to renegade former premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The Taliban which have been launching more regular, spectacular attacks have waged a violent campaign against the country's education system. They believe educating girls is against Islam and oppose government-funded schools for boys that teach subjects besides religion. Dozens of schools have been attacked and many burned since 2001. haired, bespectacled Provenzano to Palermo for detention.

"There was no problem entering (the farm) or in the capture." Provenzano, 73, has been on the lam since 1963, surviving thanks to a network of faithful henchmen, his family and corrupt police and politicians. Authorities say he became the ''capo di tutti capi," the boss of bosses, following the arrest in 1993 of Salvatore "The Beast" Riina. From behind the scenes, Provenzano continued to pull the strings, directing the Cosa Nostra, as the Sicilian Mafia is known, in its aggressive pursuit of protection rackets, extortion and white-collar crimes such fraudulent public-works construction, prosecutors say. He was convicted in absentia in the 1992 bombing murder of a leading anti-Mafia prosecutor in Sicily. Ruthless and cunning, he earned the nickname "The Tractor" from his reputation for mowing down people in his youth, when he was an up-and-coming hit man for the Corleone clan.

"With this arrest, the Mafia has been beheaded," Piero Grasso, Italy's top anti-Mafia prosecutor, said in a news By TRACY WILKINSON Los Angeles Times ROME -For more than 40 years he eluded arrest. He dispatched orders on little typewritten notes and shunned telephones that might pinpoint his location. His resume allegedly included some of the most gruesome murders in Mafia lore. On Tuesday, the reputed godfather of the Cosa Nostra and Italy's most-wanted fugitive was captured in a ramshackle farmhouse outside the Sicilian town of Corleone, a name made infamous by author Mario Puzo and Marlon Brando. Bernardo "The Tractor" Provenzano was unarmed and did not resist arrest, authorities said.

Not a shot was fired. The man who authorities say is responsible for one of the bloodiest chapters of Sicilian history was later seen being bundled into police headquarters in Palermo, handcuffed and surrounded by masked security agents as people in a crowd outside pumped their fists in the air and shouted "murderer!" "He was calm," said Gilberto Calderozzi, one of the police officers who participated in the raid and escorted the gray- Come celebrate the real lifesavers at Life Flight's 25th Anniversary. Saturday, April 22 8 a.m. 5 p.m. St.

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