The LaPresse news agency quoted Angelino Alfano, Italy's current interior minister and deputy premier, as telling colleagues yesterday that his "New Center-Right" would support Berlusconi, who today is due to re-launch his original Forza Italia party.
But the refusal of Alfano and other Berlusconi allies to join Forza Italia marked a formal schism in Italy's center-right that has been in the works ever since Berlusconi was forced to back down on his threat to topple Premier Enrico Letta's government.
The implications of the split on Letta's government weren't immediately clear.
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