ROME -- Deep cracks appeared in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's broad center-right coalition on Tuesday after the opposition secured a surprisingly strong victory in Italian local elections.

Ministers of all colors demanded a high-level review of government policy in light of the defeat, with some alliance leaders hinting that the time had come for a cabinet reshuffle. "We need to relaunch the coalition," said Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini, leader of the right-wing National Alliance. "To relaunch it, we need to evaluate not only our program but also our people."

Berlusconi's House of Freedom alliance crashed to defeat in a number of nationwide ballots that wrapped up on Monday, losing provincial elections in Rome and a regional vote in the wealthy Friuli Venezia Giulia area in northeastern Italy.

Center-left parties crowed victory, sensing that the tide might finally have turned after months of disarray in the wake of their hefty 2001 general election slump.

But political commentators said it was more a case of government parties losing by bickering during the local campaign than opposition parties winning it on their own merit.

At the heart of the coalition strife lies tensions that pit Umberto Bossi's populist Northern League, supported by Treasury Minister Giulio Tremonti, against Fini's National Alliance and the moderate Democratic Union of the Center (UDC).

Fini and centrist allies believe Berlusconi has made too many concessions to the rabble-rousing Bossi, damaging their standing with moderate and southern voters.

Bossi in turn thinks his cabinet colleagues want to sink his drive to devolve a raft of powers to the provinces and on Tuesday threatened to quit if he wasn't given guarantees.

"Either they give me a date for (my) reforms or else that's it," he said in an interview with ***Corriere della Sera*** newspaper. ----------Pensions Threat--------

Berlusconi has given Bossi a long leash over the past two years, ever-mindful of the fact that his first government collapsed in 1994 after just a few months when the Northern League walked out over pension reform.

The barbed pensions issue is once again on the table, with Bossi pushing for just moderate changes to the heavily-indebted pensions system while other parties seek a more radical review.

That problem, plus Berlusconi's long-running fight with the judiciary, will be on the agenda when coalition leaders get together to discuss their electoral reversals.

The meeting had been planned for this week, but Berlusconi's busy foreign agenda could delay the showdown.

He is currently in the Middle East, is considering a lightning trip to the United States at the weekend and next week travels to Greece for a summit of European Union leaders.

"Berlusconi doesn't want to hear any talk of a cabinet reshuffle and is taking his time," left-leaning ***La Repubblica*** reported on Tuesday.

The most obvious lesson to emerge from the local ballot was that Italy is becoming increasingly bipolar, with voters rewarding political blocks that present a united front.

The center-left largely succeeded in holding together broad local alliances that united communists with liberalists.

But underlying tensions at a national level will come to the fore again this weekend during a referendum on labor laws with the communists pushing in one direction and moderates the other.