Premier Romano Prodi, who narrowly survived a do-or-die vote in the Senate this week, said on Thursday that his nine-month-old government had benefited from the recent crisis.
"The government has gone through a critical period from which I'm convinced it will emerge stronger and more united," the centre-left premier said.
Prodi, whose nine-party coalition ranges from hard-leftists to staunch Catholics, briefly resigned last week after losing an important vote in the Senate on his government's foreign policy.
The ballot defeat was partly due to two hard-left senators who failed to support the government.
There was no constitutional requirement for Prodi to step down since the Senate ballot was not a confidence vote. But Foreign Minister Masssimo D'Alema upped the stakes by saying ahead of the vote that the government would quit if it lost, leaving the premier little choice.
After two days of consultations with political leaders, President Giorgio Napolitano rejected Prodi's resignation on Saturday but asked him to test his majority in parliament.
Prodi will address the House on Friday morning before a confidence vote which he is easily expected to win.
The confidence vote in the Senate on Wednesday night was a far more risky one since the premier holds only one more seat there than the Silvio Berlusconi-led opposition and has problems holding his fractious allies in line.
The premier won the confidence vote with 162 votes, two more than the majority needed, with 157 voting against him.
Prodi got extra support from top opposition centrist Senator Marco Follini, who switched sides last week, and Senator Luigi Pallaro, an Argentinian millionaire elected on an overseas ticket.
Four of the upper chamber's seven life senators also backed Prodi.
The opposition contested Prodi's reliance on the life senators' help in the ballot.
Dubbed the "magnificent seven", the elderly life senators hold the balance of power and have come to the government's rescue several times in the past.
DOUBTS REMAIN OVER GOVT'S LONG-TERM PROSPECTS.
Political analysts said that although the premier had survived the crisis, he would nonetheless remain weak and at the mercy of his own senators, especially on foreign policy.
Prodi, whose first, 1996-98 government was brought down by a Communist ally, has angered hard-leftists and pacifists by refusing to withdraw Italian peacekeeping troops from Afghanistan and approving the expansion of a US military base on Italian soil.
The premier has sought to strengthen his hand by pinning his nine allies to a new, "non-negotiable" 12-point programme.
The pact, approved a week ago, commits all parties to accepting the government's foreign policy, including the continuation of the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.
A key clause is that the premier has the final word in the event of a row.
But the two leftists who helped topple Prodi last week, Franco Turigliatto and Fernando Rossi, have already said they cannot guarantee their support in a crucial ballot next month on refinancing the Afghan mission and at least three other pacifist senators have expressed doubts.
Turigliatto, who has been expelled for two years from the Communist Refoundation Party, bitterly accused the government on Thursday of shifting towards the centre.
"This crisis has given life to a centrist project which will put the alternative Left into a corner," he said.
The government has been forced to resort to a series of confidence votes to keep rebel allies in line - Wednesday's was the 14th since the government was sworn in last May.
A particularly risky issue for Prodi is that of granting certain rights to cohabiting heterosexual and same-sex couples with a bill dubbed DICO.
His cabinet approved the bill last month and it is now before the Senate Justice Committee but it is fiercely opposed by the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI.
Many Catholic centrists in Prodi's coalition, including Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, are consequently against the bill, leading to clashes with leftists and anti-clericalists in the alliance.
The DICO cost Prodi the support on Wednesday of life senator Giulio Andreotti, a veteran Christian Democrat who admitted to feeling "bitter" over the bill.
