Italy's Defence Ministry budget has been spared swingeing spending cuts this year, leaving the government searching for 900 million euros in deficit-saving measures to keep its 2004 accounts in line.
Defence Minister Antonio Martino told reporters on Tuesday during a trip to the Farnborough airshow that the administration had decided to halve the amount of recently-announced cuts for his ministry, originally put at 1.81 billion euros for 2004.
"We decided this morning to present tomorrow (Wednesday) to parliament an amendment that reduces the defence cut by 50 percent," Martino said.
"There will be a cover for this. A way will be found. I don't what it will be, all that I was interested in was getting the defence cut reduced," he added.
Government sources told Reuters that officials were still searching for ways to make up the difference.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's cabinet agreed earlier this month a package of 7.5 billion euros of measures aimed at keeping Italy's 2004 deficit within 3.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), as demanded by the European Union.
Some 4.2 billion euros of the cuts in the so-called mini-budget were earmarked for government ministries, with defence bearing the brunt of this.
However, with Italian troops deployed in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, officials had said there was no way to absorb such massive, last-minute reductions to the annual budget.
The revised package is due to be presented on Wednesday to the budget commission in the lower house of parliament.
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