Cottarelli, whom Mattarella asked on Monday to try and form a caretaker government, is close to giving up his bid and did not submit a cabinet line-up to Mattarella, parliamentary sources told AKI.
Italy's grassroots Five-Star Movement and the far-right League party are demanding new elections in July and have said their lawmakers will not vote confidence in Cottarelli - a former International Monetary Fund director known as 'Mr Scissors' in Italy for his enthusiasm for spending cuts.
A nascent Five-Star-League government collapsed on Sunday after its Premier-designate Giuseppe Conte, a law professor, resigned when Mattarella vetoed the populists' choice of Finance Minister - the prominent eurosceptic economist Paolo Savona.
Italy has been in political limbo since the inconclusive March 4 national polls in which populist parties made strong gains but no single political force won an outright parliamentary majority. Several rounds of post-election talks with part leaders collapsed amid a mesh of seemingly irreconcilable demands.
Five-Star and the League may form an electoral alliance ahead of fresh elections and a survey for left-leaning daily La Repubblica on Monday predicted they could win 90 percent of seats in Italy's parliament in a re-vote.
(This story has not been edited by Social News XYZ staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
