The vote -- 309 to 39 with 270 abstentions mainly from Berlusconi's conservative "Freedom Alliance" coalition -- raised immediate questions about how long Dini's new "government of experts" from outside party politics could survive.
Dini, a former central banker who was treasury minister in the Berlusconi government that fell last month, won the vote of endorsement for his cabinet from leftist and centrist parties which until now had formed the parliamentary opposition.
He was also backed by the mainstream of the federalist Northern League, whose pull-out from the previous government cost media tycoon Berlusconi his majority in the chamber.
Committed to a four-point program of key legislation he says he will implement as fast as possible and then resign, Dini appealed in vain to the Berlusconi camp to support him in his closing speech to the confidence debate.
The coalition, whose main forces are Berlusconi's Forza Italia and the far-right National Alliance, abstained after it failed to obtain an explicit pledge from Dini or President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro that general elections could take place in June.
Media mogul Berlusconi said his coalition would now back Dini on a case-by-case basis but suggested he should quit by mid-April to allow elections to go ahead.
Saying the legislature had been "totally delegitimized," Berlusconi told reporters: "The minority in the country has become the majority in parliament. The only way to return to constitutional normality is to return to the will of the voters."
Dini, 63, leads a cabinet of academics, lawyers and business executives sworn in by Scalfaro on Jan. 17 after it became clear that no stable majority existed in the severely splintered parliament to support a government of politicians.
Italy's 54th government since World War II, the Dini team must now win a confidence vote in the upper house next Wednesday to become fully empowered.
Dini's four-point agenda includes a supplementary budget for 1995 to keep Italy's large deficit in check and reform to the costly system of state pensions.
His cabinet also intends to draw up new voting rules for regional elections this spring and for party political access to the information media, a major issue given Berlusconi's ownership of three private television networks.
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