His meetings included representatives of several members of prime minister Mr Prodi's centre-left coalition, as well as of the small party whose defection brought down his 20-month administration.

'For the moment it is impossible to summarise anything,' Mr Napolitano told reporters after the talks with leaders of the minor groupings.

He will be meeting the larger parties on Monday and Tuesday.

Meanwhile the left-wing daily La Repubblica reported that Napolitano would try to persuade conservative opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi to suspend his clamour for new elections until electoral reform could be pushed through parliament.

Mr Napolitano is determined to resist pressure to send voters back to the ballot box before Italy's widely criticised electoral law is overhauled under a caretaker government.

The president is due to see the 71-year-old former prime minister - who pushed through the current law shortly before the April 2006 elections which gave a narrow victory to the Prodi camp - on Tuesday.

The flamboyant Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, wants to take advantage of the left's plunging popularity: three recent voter surveys show the Italian right with double-digit leads over the left.

Mr Berlusconi is backed by his right-wing ally Gianfranco Fini and Clemente Mastella, a former justice minister, who pulled his Catholic centrist UDEUR party out of Prodi's coalition earlier this month after being named in a corruption probe.

'We are against a technical government... and in favour of early elections,' Mr Mastella said after his talks with Mr Napolitano.

Communist leader Oliviero Diliberto also called for elections, while environment minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio said he wanted Prodi to be asked to form a new government to continue improvements in the Italian economy.

Apart from Mr Napolitano, a former communist, left-wingers such as Rome's mayor Walter Veltroni, and the head of the employers' federation Luca Cordero Di Montezemolo, want a caretaker administration, saying elections under the present law would be the worst possible course.

The current system's main flaw is that it results in fragmented parliaments with unstable coalitions in government.

It was pushed through parliament by the outgoing Mr Berlusconi government with the goal of limiting the extent of an expected win by the left.

Mr Prodi, too busy struggling to keep his squabbling coalition together, was unable to address many pocketbook issues over his 20 months in office even while returning Italy to economic growth after years in the red under Mr Berlusconi.

For Veltroni, who heads a newly-formed centre-left grouping, the Democratic Party, elections would come too soon, before he has managed to bring under proper control the ex-communists and reformist Catholics who came together in the new party only a few months ago.

Commentators also said Mr Prodi, 68, who has a different view of left-wing politics than Mr Veltroni, should not be counted out in the future, though he has said he wants to bow out.

The Corriere della Sera paper said on Saturday that if he cannot convince enough parties that a caretaker government is needed, Mr Napolitano could name a prominent figure to conduct further negotiations and exhaust every possible solution.

This could be Franco Marini, 74, the current president of the Senate, who has also been tipped to head a transitional government, the paper said. -- AFP