ROME, July 19 (Reuters) - An Italian opposition party said on Monday it would call a vote of no confidence in a junior minister, keeping up pressure on the centre-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The Italy of Values party said it would call the motion in the Senate against junior Justice Minister Giacomo Caliendo, over what it said was his role in an influence-peddling scandal which has shaken Italian politics in recent weeks.
"The presence of Caliendo in the government has become at the least an embarrassment, given the role he seems to have played in the so-called ‘P3’ investigation," Felice Belisario, head of the Italy of Values group in the Senate, parliament’s upper house, said in a statement.
Caliendo has not been placed under investigation in the case but media reports have said he attended meetings with some of those whose names have been implicated. In an interview with La Repubblica daily on Sunday, he denied any wrongdoing and said he would not resign.
The government has a big enough majority to defeat the motion, but another junior minister resigned last week several days before he was due to face a similar no-confidence vote.
Nicola Cosentino, undersecretary in the economy ministry, quit after his name was linked to the P3 case, becoming the third member of the government to fall in recent months. Industry Minister Claudio Scajola resigned in May and federalism minister Aldo Brancher on July 5 over separate scandals.
The P3 case involves an investigation into a group of officials and businessmen close to the ruling People of Freedom party who are suspected of trying to exert secret influence over certain key political and judicial appointments.
It takes its name from the P2 scandal of the 1980s, which centred on a Masonic lodge whose members included politicians and members of the security services and which was accused of trying to set up a secret "state within a state".
The opposition Democratic Party called on Berlusconi to sack Caliendo last week but the government said it had no indications that he had been involved in any wrongful activity.
The P3 affair, which Berlusconi and other members of the government have dismissed as a media-inspired witchhunt, comes as the government is driving an unpopular 25 billion euro austerity package through parliament.
The package, which was approved last week in the Senate, is due to come before the lower house for approval before the end of the month.
