ROME _ Italy's populist parties agreed to a draft government plan, while leaders Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini met but didn't reveal who they're considering for the prime minister's job.
"We have not talked about names yet. Today we will talk about the government contract," the Ansa news service quoted Five Star Movement head Di Maio as saying before starting the talks with his League party counterpart in Milan. A court decision to lift a ban on Silvio Berlusconi running for public office "does not change anything," Di Maio said.
Officials from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and anti-immigration League completed a joint policy draft called "Contract for the Government of Change" before the leaders' meeting. No details of the program were disclosed.
In talks Friday, the two leaders found "many points of agreement" on a citizen's income for the poor, a flat tax, pension reform, "the issue of countering the business of immigration" and regulating conflicts of interest, Di Maio told reporters.
Five Star, founded as a web-based organization in 2009, will ask its supporters for their opinion on the government program they're negotiating, he said.
Former Prime Minister Berlusconi, Salvini's junior partner in a center-right alliance after running in coalition with the League in the recent elections, won an appeal against a Milan court's ban on his seeking public office.
If there's another election, Berlusconi, who was convicted of tax fraud in 2013, will be free to run for the lower house of Parliament or the Senate, Corriere della Sera newspaper reported Saturday, citing a Friday judicial ruling. Berlusconi said May 9 that he would not veto a Five Star-League government.
Di Maio and Salvini have promised President Sergio Mattarella, whose job it is to appoint a prime minister, that they'll tell him the results of their talks on Sunday. If they agree on a prime minister, other ministers and a program, Mattarella could ask their choice of leader to try to form a government Monday or Tuesday.
A populist government could be sworn in a few days later, before facing a vote of confidence in both houses of Parliament. Salvini's center-right alliance led Five Star in the March 4 elections that resulted in a hung Parliament.
