Indubitably Mr Ciampi is a formidable operator, however divorced he has been from party politics.
Mr Ciampi, whose seven years in office end on May 13th, was not pleased.
Mr Ciampi wanted Mr Berlusconi's commitment in writing to insure against any further misunderstandings.
On January 20th, Mr Ciampi sent back to parliament a bill on appeal procedures.
Only days earlier Charles Prince, boss of Citigroup, had paid a fence-mending visit to Carlo Ciampi, Italy's president.
If Mr Ciampi was impressed, presumably it was only until he learned of Citigroup's lawsuit against the government.
After a break, Mr Ciampi returned to government and has been treasury minister for the past three years.
Mr Ciampi, however, has been chosen not for his European views but for his non-partisan acumen on the home front.
In 1992 and 1993, he picked two capable men, Giuliano Amato and then Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, to lead technocratic governments.
In the midst of crises, Mr Scalfaro picked the other four, including the incumbent, Mr D'Alema, and Mr Ciampi himself .
If Mr Berlusconi had not managed to revamp his coalition, President Ciampi would have been likely to callsnap elections, analysts say.
But he then upset the opposition and the president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, by hinting that the election might be delayed to May.
Ciampi said the attack would not change Italy's resolve to fight terrorism.
President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the head of state, refused to sign the bill, which had passed both houses of parliament, into law.
Mr Ciampi certainly thinks that tragedies such as the one in Kosovo make the creation of stronger European institutions all the more urgent.
Italy's president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, has urged Italians as a whole (but clearly with Mr Berlusconi in mind) to respect the courts' decisions.
He himself had been against the immunity law but the idea for it had been backed, he said, by Italy's President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
He could install a temporary regime of technocrats, probably led by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, treasury minister and a respected former prime minister and central banker.
Guido Carli, one of Mr Ciampi's predecessors as governor, tried unsuccessfully to keep the politicians' excesses in check when he was treasury minister between 1989 and 1992.
It is likely that Italy's President Ciampi, who had pushed for Ruggiero's inclusion in the cabinet, will now pressure Berlusconi to appoint a new foreign minister much sooner than that.
CNN: Berlusconi appointed himself as the new foreign minister
Mr Ciampi assured his Brussels colleagues that it could be brought down to 60% by 2009, but that would require both heroic growth assumptions and ten more years of fiscal austerity.
Whoopee, crowed today's opposition, gleefully seizing on Mr Ciampi's message as a tool against the feeble draft law on conflicts of interest that is supposed to sort out those of Mr Berlusconi.
Opponents of the bill have also appealed to President Azeglio Ciampi to refuse to sign the bill into law - but correspondents say it is very unlikely he will risk causing a constitutional crisis.
"I express my firmest condemnation of this new act of violence that, added with other cruel gestures carried out in that tormented country, does not help pacification or renewal, " the pope said in a message to Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
As finance minister in the government of Romano Prodi, I worked closely with Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, when he was treasury minister, on the fiscal and economic reforms which enabled Italy to join the euro in the first group of countries to do so.
One of President Ciampi's stated reasons for rejecting the bill was that it reversed a decision of Italy's highest court ordering Mediaset to move one of its channels, Rete4, to satellite broadcasting on the grounds that no operator's share of terrestrial output should exceed 20%.
He would not only study carefully the five-page document President Ciampi sent to parliament explaining his refusal, to see how the communications bill needs to be amended, but also he would return to his promise to deal with his conflicts of interest, for that is what lies at the heart of this matter.
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