Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said last week Italy was ready to send peacekeepers to Iraq to help quell anarchy in the wake of the collapse of Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted regime.

He proposed sending a detachment of carabinieri officers, a police force controlled by the defence ministry.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini is to outline their mandate to both houses of parliament ahead of the vote, the head of the Democratic Left parliamentary opposition bloc said on Monday.

The Italian opposition insists that any peacekeeping force should have a clear United Nations mandate and that Italy's constitution forbids it from taking part in a war.

The centre-right government coalition has a clear majority in both houses of parliament, but also appeared divided Monday over sending peacekeepers into Iraq without a clear UN mandate.

Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini of the right-wing National Alliance said on Monday that a United Nations mandate for the troops was "desirable but not absolutely necessary".

The centre-right European Affairs Minister Rocco Buttiglione has taken a more cautious line, however.

"If the carabinieri leave under United Nations or NATO command, or based on an agreement with interim Iraqi authorities, that is not a problem," he said in an interview published Monday.

"But if they are integrated into the same command structure as fighting US troops, that is a problem," he told La Stampa daily.

Former Italian president Francesco Cossiga told La Stampa: "If we put our carabinieri under coalition orders, then we are no longer non-belligerant."

"The occupying forces in the country are responsible for maintaining order and public security," he said.

Italy, which is due to take over the rotating EU presidency in July, was one one of the strongest supporters of the US-led war.

Rome nonetheless denied the United States use of its military bases to launch the war without UN backing.

But the United States worked around the ban by parachuting in 1,000 men stationed in northern Italy to join operations in northern Iraq.

SPACE.WIRE