Following a day of strategery and casting blank votes, the Italian parliament on Wednesday finally managed to elect a new president. Giorgio Napolitano -- an 80-year-old former commmunist -- will take over from outgoing president Carlo Ciampi. The election paves the way for Romano Prodi, elected as prime minister more than a month ago in a closely fought contest with Silvio Berlusconi, to form a government.

Napolitano, 80, who had been serving as Senator-for-life, was elected by the parliament in the fourth round of voting to become the 11th head of state since 1945. He is a member of the Democrats of the Left (DS), a Cold War remnant of what was Europe's biggest Communist party. "I urge that the Bush administration won't see this as the election of a Communist," said Richard Gardner a former US Embassador in Rome under Jimmy Carter in an AP interview. "but as the election of a good man who can be counted on to carry his function in a way which will please the United States."

The president elect fought against the Nazis and Fascists in World War II and afterwards, joined the Communist Party. In 1953, Napolitano was elected to the Italian parliament and remained for there for 10 consecutive legislatures. His most powerful position was as interior minister in the 1996-1998 Prodi government.

Napolitano's election marks the clearing of the first major hurdle for the fragile governing coalition headed up by Prodi. A candidate backed by outgoing Prime Minister Berlusconi had threatened to lure votes away from Prodi's coalition. Berlusconi, not surprisingly, was far from impressed with the result of the election.

"We are still convinced that half of the country has been excluded," he said, referring to his center-right opposition coalition. "This is not the will of the people, but we wish him well."

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung refers to Napolitano as "a president of reconciliation." The gap between Christian Democrats and Communists that has existed since the end of WWII seems to have been bridged, the paper says. "With the election of the ex-communist Giorgio Napolitano, the Cold War in Italy is also finally over." And after the antics of Berlusconi during the prime minister election over a month ago -- when he went for weeks without conceding defeat -- the article calls Napolitano's serious and thoughtful demeanor a "relief for the shrill Italian media democracy." But even though the article sees Napolitano's election as good news, it also says that the opportunity to bring together Berlusconi opponents and his biggest fans still has not been realized. They should have both supported Napolitano "to show that they can get along better with each other in the future in contrast to the last five years of the Berlusconi administration. The outgoing prime minister refused to allow for this act of reconciliation."

"It looks like Italy has come a bit closer to finding itself," according to an editorial from right-leaning Die Welt. The commentary celebrates the end of a "sterile protest culture," under Berlusconi, who managed to successfully suppress critique of himself. "The process of the last few weeks has reawakened Italy to the virtues of its first republic ... the playful elements of the president's election point to this.... Italy is not as divided as the election opponents swore that it was." The editorial praises Italy for going back to its old roots. "The Italians once invented 'res publica'".

The leftist Berliner Zeitung calls Napolitano's election a "coup" in comparison to Prodi's narrow victory last month. "Italy's 11th president, a distinguished man, and a social democrat who was once a communist ... is historical compensation for the leftist democrats." The editorial says Napolitano will be protected by Italians, as other presidents have been. But he won't go completely uncriticized, it says. "Critique is taboo. Berlusconi will nevertheless try. That is an expression of his desperation over Prodi's coup."

-- Rose-Anne Clermont, 2:35 p.m. CET

More babies and a stronger military were two key issues in Vladimir Putin's seventh state of the union address, which he delivered to the Kremlin on Wednesday. "No amount of migration will solve our demographic problems unless we create the appropriate conditions and incentives to increase the birth rate here, at home, in our own country," he said according to a BBC translation of his address. He said Russia's population was shrinking by 700,000 people per year.

Putin spent most of the rest of his address focusing on improving Russia's military. "Along with the air defence penetration systems that we already have, new types of weaponry will allow us to maintain what is undoubtedly one of the most significant guarantees of world stability, namely, the preservation of the strategic balance of forces."

In what several international media have labelled a return to Cold War style arms talk, Putin compared the Russian defense system to America's. "The US has a defense budget that is 25 times that of Russia's.... America's home is their castle, good for them. It means we should build our own house strongly and reliably."

The Russian president also criticized the United States while responding to an accusation made by US Vice President Dick Cheney that Russia was focusing more on arming its ex-Soviet neighbors than on democracy. "Where is all this pathos about protecting human rights and democracy when it comes to the need to pursue their own interests," he asked?

Putin also addressed economic issues like the conversion of the rouble, for which he set a launch date of July 1. Some of the German media would have liked to have heard more about this as an issue of Russia's role as a major economic player.

"He dedicated a third of his address [to defense] and only a couple of dry sentences to the urgent economic questions," says one commentary in the business daily Handelsblatt. In an editorial entitled "Putin's Priorities" the author says the Russian president has finally figured out the keys to Russia's advancement as an economic superpower. "Russia will only become a powerful country with a powerful economy. And part of that is a free and convertible currency." Only then, says the commentator, can Russia become a full member of the G8 club, which he calls "an important step in the direction of an economic power." A discussion of economic issues he says, "would have given the big empire new attention, which is much more meaningful than the power of armed forces."