The indictment, which runs to almost 1,750 pages, concludes that the attacks were carried out by local radical Islamists who were inspired by, but not directly linked to, al-Qa'ida.

The 29th man charged over the bombings was Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a former miner who provided the bombers with plastic explosives. He was charged with 192 murders, including the death of a policeman killed during a raid on suspected bombers a few weeks after the attacks.

The train bombings led to the downfall of the then conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar, who initially blamed the bombings on the Basque separatist group Eta.

Among the five Moroccan nationals charged with murder was Jamal Zougam, the first man arrested after the massacre. A holdall, found in the wreckage of one of the trains contained an unexploded bomb connected by wires to a mobile phone. Police were able to trace the SIM card to a phone shop owned by Mr Zougam. His fingerprints were also found in the house outside Madrid where the bombs were manufactured.

According to the indictment, another Moroccan, Abdelmajid Bouchar, was in the bomb-making apartment when a separate group of alleged attackers blew themselves up. He was downstairs when the apartment was surrounded by anti-terrorist police. He is accused of telephoning his associates to warn them of an impending raid by the police before escaping.

Mr Bouchar was arrested in Serbia a year later, while carrying false Iraqi papers, and extradited to Spain. Both Mr Zougam and Mr Bouchar and the three others named in the indictment had links to the Moroccan Islamic Fighters' Group (GICM), which carried out the Casablanca bombings in May 2003.

Mr Trashorras came into contact with the Islamic gang in jail while he was serving a sentence for drug dealing and the Moroccans were serving time for other non-terrorist crimes. He agreed to arrange the theft of the explosives from the mines where he had worked. His motivation was said to be purely financial.

Judge del Olmo said that he had investigated two separate networks - the first directly involved in the bombings and the second those who collaborated with the planning and helped the terrorists escape.

He concluded they had plotted the atrocity to coincide with the general election in Spain on 13 March and found no evidence linking the attacks to Eta.

But Vicente Martin Pujalte, of the conservative opposition party, said they were still unconvinced by the "insufficient conclusion". He said: "To say this is an autonomous cell who simply decided [to carry out the bombing] one morning seems a weak argument." He described the accused as "secondary actors" in the conspiracy.

A Spanish judge has launched one of Europe's largest terrorism prosecutions, charging 29 people in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

After a two-year investigation, Judge Juan Del Olmo charged five people, all Moroccan nationals, with 191 counts of murder and 1,755 attempted murders, when they blew up three commuter trains in the Spanish capital. Another 23 were charged with collaboration.

The indictment, which runs to almost 1,750 pages, concludes that the attacks were carried out by local radical Islamists who were inspired by, but not directly linked to, al-Qa'ida.

The 29th man charged over the bombings was Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a former miner who provided the bombers with plastic explosives. He was charged with 192 murders, including the death of a policeman killed during a raid on suspected bombers a few weeks after the attacks.

The train bombings led to the downfall of the then conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar, who initially blamed the bombings on the Basque separatist group Eta.

Among the five Moroccan nationals charged with murder was Jamal Zougam, the first man arrested after the massacre. A holdall, found in the wreckage of one of the trains contained an unexploded bomb connected by wires to a mobile phone. Police were able to trace the SIM card to a phone shop owned by Mr Zougam. His fingerprints were also found in the house outside Madrid where the bombs were manufactured.

According to the indictment, another Moroccan, Abdelmajid Bouchar, was in the bomb-making apartment when a separate group of alleged attackers blew themselves up. He was downstairs when the apartment was surrounded by anti-terrorist police. He is accused of telephoning his associates to warn them of an impending raid by the police before escaping.

Mr Bouchar was arrested in Serbia a year later, while carrying false Iraqi papers, and extradited to Spain. Both Mr Zougam and Mr Bouchar and the three others named in the indictment had links to the Moroccan Islamic Fighters' Group (GICM), which carried out the Casablanca bombings in May 2003.

Mr Trashorras came into contact with the Islamic gang in jail while he was serving a sentence for drug dealing and the Moroccans were serving time for other non-terrorist crimes. He agreed to arrange the theft of the explosives from the mines where he had worked. His motivation was said to be purely financial.

Judge del Olmo said that he had investigated two separate networks - the first directly involved in the bombings and the second those who collaborated with the planning and helped the terrorists escape.

He concluded they had plotted the atrocity to coincide with the general election in Spain on 13 March and found no evidence linking the attacks to Eta.

But Vicente Martin Pujalte, of the conservative opposition party, said they were still unconvinced by the "insufficient conclusion". He said: "To say this is an autonomous cell who simply decided [to carry out the bombing] one morning seems a weak argument." He described the accused as "secondary actors" in the conspiracy.

"On the foreign vote there were a great many irregularities," he said.

"It cannot be excluded that this vote can be declared invalid," said Berlusconi, who fought a vitriolic campaign to extend his five-year reign -- the longest since World War II.

He even offered the image of a German-style "grand coalition" in case a recount eventually ended with each side taking one house -- a divided parliament.

"I think maybe we should follow the example of some other European countries, like Germany, to see if there is a case for joining forces and governing together," he said.

Each chamber in the Italian parliament has equal power, meaning both the lower house Chamber of Deputies and upper house Senate must be secured for a government to rule effectively.

But Prodi quashed the idea of setting up government with Berlusconi's camp.

"We came into this election with a set coalition, and the electoral law has alloted us a number of seats in the Chamber (of Deputies) and in the Senate which will allow us to govern," he told journalists Tuesday outside his campaign headquarters in Rome.

Still, Berlusconi's declarations raised the spectre of a Florida-style recount debacle akin to the situation that brought his close ally US
President George W. Bush to power in 2000.

Only minutes earlier, full results showed Prodi's Union alliance had snatched the elections from the conservative House of Freedoms coalition, after a campaign that had attacked the prime minister relentlessly over Italy's weak economy.

Prodi's centre-left bloc took control of the Senate, which had been hanging in the balance, the interior ministry said. A full count had already shown him as the winner in the lower chamber.

"Whoever wins, wins, that's the beauty of democracy," the sober 66-year-old economist, nicknamed "Il Professore", said earlier in the day.

But Berlusconi's own Forza Italia party had said it would press for a recount given the wafer-thin margin -- just 25,224 votes -- which separated the two sides in the lower house.

"There is a difference of 25,000 votes and there are 43,000 contested votes," Forza Italia's national coordinator Sandro Bondi said in a debate on Sky Italia television.

"For the moment, you have won nowhere: neither in the House, nor in the Senate," said Bondi.

The full results showed Prodi's team winning 158 seats of 315 seats up for grabs in the Senate, compared to 156 for Berlusconi.

The Prodi alliance also won 342 seats in the 630-seat lower house Chamber of Deputies compared to 281 for Berlusconi.

Among the first congratulations for the former European Commission president's election victory came from the current head of the European Union's executive, Jose Manuel Barroso.

Prodi had "actively promoted the general European interest" as commission chief and would "continue to work in this direction" as Italian premier, Barroso said in a statement, while also noting the "constructive and fruitful relationship" he had had with Berlusconi.

Outside Prodi's Rome headquarters supporters milled restlessly, awaiting a final, iron-clad confirmation he had won.

Gianni Marchetti, a 54-year-old biologist in Rome on holiday from northern Padua, said he hoped a "new Florida" could be avoided.

"It should have been such an easy victory," Marchetti said, ticking off Berlusconi's "notorious gaffes, his negative image overseas, his disastrous economic policies, the impoverishment of the people, Italy's decline on the world market..."

In the nearby Via del Corso, one of Rome's busiest shopping streets, Daniele Calicchia said he would not welcome a recount. "Berlusconi does his best to turn things his way. But that would not be good for Italy," said Calicchia, a volunteer raising money for a drug abuse program.

At a nearby clothing boutique, a saleswoman, Giusappina Vista, said she would not oppose a recount. "If there's a doubt, why not?"

The close relationship between Mr Blair and the Italian media mogul has mystified Labour MPs, who privately say the Blairs were dazzled by wealth. The election result is also likely to bring the curtain down on the free holidays the Blairs enjoyed at Mr Berlusconi's villa in Sardinia.

The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera dubbed the Blairs "The Sultans of Bling" after Mr Blair declared receiving watches, earrings, a necklace, a ring and a bracelet from Mr Berlusconi.

However, it was David Mills, husband of the cabinet minister Tessa Jowell and a corporate lawyer who acted for Mr Berlusconi, who has caused Mr Blair most trouble. Mr Mills is still facing the possibility of charges with Mr Berlusconi over corruption, and Ms Jowell announced that she was separating from her husband as the calls for her resignation mounted.

Ms Jowell, one of Mr Blair's closest allies in the Cabinet, survived, but Mr Blair became mired with the sleaze allegations surrounding Mr Mills and Mr Berlusconi's financial deals.

For Mr Mills, who is accused of accepting a £350,000 bribe from the outgoing Italian Prime Minister, Mr Berlusconi's defeat will provide little comfort.

A judge is due to open a hearing in Milan in June to decide whether the case brought by prosecutors should proceed to trial. It is alleged that the British lawyer was paid in exchange for providing favourable testimony during two previous trials into Mr Berlusconi's business dealings. Both men deny the charges.

Much of Mr Berlusconi's time in office was spent passing laws limiting the time frame in which he could be prosecuted after an alleged offence to 10 years. There were suggestions last night, however, that a new government might seek to change the statute of limitations to enable the trial to reach a conclusion.

Mr Berlusconi and Mr Mills claim to have documents that prove the £350,000 was paid to Mr Mills by another client, Diego Attanasio, a Neapolitan shipowner. However, Mr Attanasio has said he that he was in prison at the time the money was paid.

The adjusted data, from the customs service, showed a deficit of EUR 2.015 billion after a deficit of EUR 2.414 billion in January.

The figure was better than economists had expected since they had forecast broadly a deficit of EUR 2.3 billion.

The customs service also revised upwards slightly the deficit for January to 2.367 billion euros.

The customs service said that the data, which showed a slight fall in exports and imports, did not change a trend towards increased overall trade.

But at Natexis Banques Populaires, economist Marc Touati commented: "The evidence is clear: we are in the course of being satisfied with a French trade deficit which has become structural."

He said that the deficit would remain high if French exports remained weakly specialised by sector and by region of the world. In addition, the recent rise of the euro would weaken the competitive position of exports and increase the appetite for imported goods.

He said: "In this context, the French external deficit, having reached EUR 22.2 billion in 2005, is likely again to come close to EUR 20 billion this year, and also next year."

The customs service said that exports in February had fallen slightly to EUR 31.574 billion from EUR 31.735 billion in January, having risen strongly in the preceding three months.

Exports to the rest of the European Union, and particularly to Italy, remained strong, but exports to other countries, except in the Middle East, had fallen because fewer aircraft had been delivered.

A UN-backed report last year said AWB paid 220 million US dollars in bribes to obtain 2.3 billion dollars in contracts from Baghdad in breach of sanctions against the former dictator's regime.

The commissioner, former judge Terence Cole, has heard evidence since the inquiry opened in January that the government was warned repeatedly that AWB was paying bribes to Baghdad.

Howard, a conservative ally of US President George W. Bush who sent Australian troops into Iraq to help topple Saddam in 2003, has publicly denied knowing that kickbacks were paid.

The prime minister follows his top lieutenants -- Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile, who is also trade minister, and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer -- into the witness box.

Vaile on Monday and Downer on Tuesday were asked what they knew of the bribes and when they knew it, and Howard is expected to face similar questions.

Both ministers have been ridiculed in the Australian media for saying they did not recall seeing more than 20 diplomatic cables over a period of years which warned of possible problems with AWB's Iraqi contracts.

The inquiry has heard that the bribes were funnelled to Baghdad through a Jordanian front company, Alia, as trucking fees, and were paid out of inflated prices claimed for the wheat through UN-run accounts.

The UN programme from 1996 to 2003 allowed Iraq to export oil to buy food and medicine aimed at lessening the suffering of civilians hit by the tough sanctions against Saddam's regime.

But last year's inquiry, headed by former US federal reserve banking chief Paul Volcker, found that some 2,000 companies worldwide were involved in a scheme designed by the former dictator to corrupt the programme, with AWB paying the biggest bribes.

While Howard and his ministers have put a brave face on being called before the commission, analysts say the spectacle of the country's leaders being grilled by lawyers will hurt the image of the government ahead of elections due next year.

The last serving Australian prime minister to appear before a royal commission was Bob Hawke, who was questioned over a spy scandal in 1983.

The opposition Labor Party has accused the government of turning a blind eye to the bribes, which it says helped fund Saddam's purchase of weapons that were later used against Australian troops.

Wheat is Australia's second biggest rural export, with annual sales around three billion dollars.

But the scandal has hurt exports, with Iraq refusing to buy any more wheat from AWB, which sold 650,000 tonnes to Baghdad in 2005 and 1.3 million tonnes in 2004.

The United States, Australia's main competitor in international wheat exports, has in turn won a greater share of the Iraqi market -- fuelling Australian government claims that the US was seeking commercial advantage from the AWB scandal.