He was egged on by Michael Zantovsky, leader of the third coalition party.
But in appeasing the Alliance, Mr Berlusconi has angered his third coalition partner, the Northern League, which backed Mr Tremonti and which, Mr Berlusconi will remember, brought down his first government in 1994, after just seven months in power.
The third measure the coalition is targeting was first proposed by the Treasury last year, but it was skewered by the then-Republican-controlled House Small Business Committee.
The other wild card is the debut of a third party, the Coalition for the Future of Quebec (CAQ).
The coalition's third main party, the catch-all Brazilian Democratic Movement, lacks a credible contender.
To make it worse the Conservatives are in a coalition with the third party, something unusual in British politics.
Trailing a distant third with 17 was its former coalition partner, the United Liberal Democrats (ULD).
The Socialists, who have been ruling in coalition, were pushed into third place by the rightish Liberals, who are now poised to team up with the Christian Democrats, whose leader, Jean-Claude Juncker, has again been asked to form a government.
Italian forces - the third largest contingent in the US-led coalition - are based in the southern city of Nasiriya, working on reconstruction.
He won a third term in 2008, and his conservative coalition has control of both the Italian Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
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The last published polls suggest that the Five Star Movement is probably in third place, ahead of Mr Monti's coalition.
On December 15th parliament gave him the green light to form a new coalition government, the country's third in four months.
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Heathrow's five-year plan is separate from any decision on whether a third Heathrow runway - currently ruled out by the coalition government - is built.
If his party cannot garner an outright majority, its likely coalition partner is Labour, the traditional third party of Irish politics which may just pip Fianna Fail this time around.
He has already drawn two parties into coalition with his own and is courting a third.
The Socialist PASOK party gained third place and an estimated 33 seats which if a coalition agreement can be reached would create a majority 161 seats.
Ever since a coalition of ecologists nearly beat the Socialists into third place at the European elections in June, French political parties have been wrangling over the environment, each claiming to be greener than the other.
Overall, net government borrowing is on course to be about a third lower as a share of GDP than when the coalition came in: it's forecast to be 6.9% of GDP in 2012-13 (excluding the temporary effect of transferring the Royal Mail pension scheme), compared with 10.1% of GDP in 2010-11.
In May 2010, the previous Labour government's plans for a third runway and sixth terminal at Heathrow were scrapped when the coalition government took office.
The Conservative and Lib Dems both opposed Labour-backed plans for a third runway at Heathrow and scrapped the plan when they went into coalition government.
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Both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats ruled out a third runway at Heathrow in their 2010 general election manifestos and the coalition agreement continued this commitment.
He also promised the coalition would stand by its commitment not to build a third runway at Heathrow, despite growing calls from Tory MPs for a change of heart.
Mr Cable denied putting out a contradictory message to Mr Clegg, who had hailed the coalition's success in cutting net migration "by a third" in his speech.
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Now in its third year, Chenoweth's movement has been adopted by the Amputee Coalition and retooled as " Show Your Mettle Day, " with public outings and awareness events planned around the country for Saturday.
The third spectre is the economic populism of Smer (Direction), the main coalition party.
Dante Delgado, a popular former governor running for a centre-left coalition based on the Party of the Democratic Revolution, Mexico's third main party, polled a respectable 28.3%.
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The coalition was initially against Heathrow expansion but leading Tories are now calling for a third runway.
He is particularly damning of the coalition's decision to go along with Labour's planned one-third cut in net public investment over five years.
In a third round of voting on Friday, top officials of Italy's center-right coalition rejected the center-left presidential candidacy of former prime minister and European Commission president Romano Prodi.
Originally from Moldova, he became Israel's foreign minister and deputy prime minister in 2009 after leading his party to third place in that year's parliamentary elections and joining the Likud-led governing coalition.
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