ROME Italians bracing for a raucous general election campaign waited to learn the date of the polls from an announcement expected on Friday after the dissolution of Parliament by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

The election, widely expected to be preceded by a vitriolic campaign pitting the ruling center-left against the opposition center-right, was expected to be fixed for May 6 or May 13.

Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, who has led a center-left government since April last year, was due to meet his cabinet at around 3 p.m. (1400 GMT) on Friday, after which the date was likely to be made public.

Ciampi held a round of consultations on Thursday and issued his decree dissolving Italy's 13th Assembly since the end of World War II after meeting the speakers of the Upper House, the Senate, and the Lower House Chamber of Deputies.

"The president of the republic, after consulting the speakers of both chambers of Parliament ...has signed the decree dissolving the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies," a statement issued by the Quirinale Presidential Palace said.

The decree brings to a close the longest surviving legislature for 33 years and one of only five parliaments in Italy to run its full five-year course since 1945.

The incumbent government normally sets the election date and passes its choice to the president as a recommendation, which is usually accepted. The announcement of the date, however, could come from either the government or the president.

The legacy of Parliament, which completed its business on Thursday, was its role in cleaning up public finances to allow Italy to join Europe's single currency and its support for NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo crisis in 1999.

It failed, however, to legislate any meaningful reform of Italy's political system or its institutions.

Almost before the ink was dry on the presidential decree, the center left and center right swapped accusations, setting the tone for what was expected to be a vitriolic campaign.

The man chosen to lead the center left, former Rome mayor Francesco Rutelli, attacked opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi, saying his media holdings gave him an unfair advantage.

"It is a formidable advantage and one difficult to resolve because every evening there are broadcasts which systematically attack me. It is not fair because he (Berlusconi) is the owner," Rutelli told state television RAI in an interview.

Berlusconi and his family control Italy's three largest private television stations, Italy's largest publishing house, a newspaper and an advertising agency.

Rutelli, who appears to have gained the support of the influential 800,000-strong housewives union, is, however, trailing in recent opinion polls by as much as seven percent.

He leads an eight-party coalition dominated by the ex-communist democrats of the left and including Greens, moderate communists, ex-Christian Democrat Centrists and four other small parties.

Berlusconi, estimated to be one of Italy's richest men, heads an electoral coalition including his conservative Forza Italia Party, the post-fascist National Alliance and the anti-immigrant Northern League, plus two small centrist parties.

Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, already accused by Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel of peddling fascist views, described the left's support for a gay pride march in Milan in June as indecent and said a renewed term for the center-left would lead to the destruction of family values.

(Reuter)