The bill has to be passed by the lower house for final approval if it gets a "Yes" vote in the Senate, the upper house of parliament where Prime Minister Romano Prodi's center-left coalition has a two-seat majority over the center-right.

Under the decree, the incumbent government would have more time to fulfill measures approved by its predecessor, thus delaying the entry into force of some laws passed by the previous government.

Prodi's government, which took power after winning an April election by a thin margin, tied its fate to the confidence vote at a Senate session on Tuesday.

The government hoped that the vote could speed up passages of legislation. If failed, however, the government has to resign.

Mr Blair could use the conference to acclaim his record while paving the way for a new leader to take on the challenge of the rejuvenated Conservative Party led by David Cameron.

Yesterday the Prime Minister brushed aside Charles Clarke's accusation that the Government was lacking leadership and direction.

He described the former home secretary as "a disappointed man" and rejected claims that the attack could hasten his exit from No 10.

He dismissed suggestions that the attack was Mr Clarke's "Geoffrey Howe moment", a reference to events that brought about Margaret Thatcher's downfall in 1990. He described it as "surface noise" that governments always faced.

"What we should do is just calm down, hold and get on with governing," he said.

Labour MPs feel certain that Mr Blair has made up his mind to go next spring. Everybody at No 10 believes that he will be gone within a year and acknowledges that power and authority is haemorrhaging away.

In the past week the Chancellor has openly assumed the mantle of prime minister-in-waiting, announcing the updating of the independent nuclear deterrent and reopening a European Union budget deal struck by Mr Blair last December that he regards as "bad" for Britain.

Mr Blair's inner circle hopes that when the Prime Minister makes clear his intention to go Mr Brown will back Blairite reforms and urge his supporters to stop trying to accelerate a takeover at No 10.

Mr Blair has admitted that it was a mistake to announce two years ago that he would not serve a fourth term and has been resisting naming a specific date for going because of fears that it would weaken his position further.

His supporters now think that it could be even more destabilising if he continues to keep his party guessing.

Some acknowledge that there is a risk he will become a lame duck, with pressure for him to go immediately once he has confirmed that he will step down next year.

But they think that Mr Brown and most MPs will go along with a leadership handover next year once Mr Blair has publicly confirmed his intentions.

At Westminster there was little sign of any heavyweight support for Mr Clarke, who used a series of interviews to make plain his anger over his dismissal as home secretary and suggested that Mr Blair might not be able to recover from recent blows to his authority.

Mr Clarke is the most senior Blairite to become publicly disloyal - and, even more significant, to begin the process of defecting to the Brown camp.

He effectively endorsed the Chancellor, a former sworn enemy, saying that he would be "happy" to see him installed as prime minister. Mr Brown has made clear that he would welcome Mr Clarke into a top domestic policy job in his first Cabinet.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said Mr Clarke's comments were "a Blairite equivalent of what Geoffrey Howe did to Margaret Thatcher all those years ago".

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, said it was clear that the Prime Minister's authority was "simply draining away".

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said that Mr Blair had been right to sack Mr Clarke last month over the freed foreign prisoners scandal.

He suggested that Mr Clarke's attack on the Prime Minister and John Reid, his successor as Home Secretary, was the result of "disappointment" over losing his job.

No 10 pointedly referred to the "difficulties" that had emerged while Mr Clarke was at the Home Office - and "continued to emerge after he left it".

It is unusual for Downing Street to brief so heavily against a former minister. Officials said that Mr Blair had offered Mr Clarke several other Cabinet posts, which he had rejected.

"That Afghanistan has enemies is not a surprise to anyone," Rice said following meetings with Karzai and with military commanders. All her meetings were held behind heavy fortifications.

Rice said the United States is committed to Afghanistan for the long haul. "We are not going to tire, we are not going to leave," she declared.

Karzai said optimism about his country's gains does not mean he is blind to its challenges, among them corruption and the drug trade.

Terrorists "are trying to attack us where they can," Karzai said. "When we speak of success, it doesn't mean that we forget the problems."

A clearly frustrated Karzai criticized the coalition's anti-terror campaign last Thursday, deploring the deaths of hundreds of Afghans and appealing for more help for his government.

Karzai did not repeat that criticism with Rice by his side, and Rice gave little sign that she is worried about the direction of the fight against terror even while acknowledging the scope of the challenge.

"This is an international force that is determined to try to undermine the aspirations of free people and they are not going to win," Rice said.

"We have to realize we that we have a common enemy. We can all do more. We can all work harder we all need to constantly assess our strategy, look at our tactics, make certain that we are responding to their change in tactics, because this is a thinking enemy."

After a few hours in Afghanistan, Rice was headed to Moscow for a meeting with counterparts from the Group of Eight industrialized nations in which the topic was expected to be
Iran's disputed nuclear program.

She had been in Pakistan on Tuesday for meetings with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and other Pakistani officials.

While there, she heard Pakistan's military government challenge neighboring Afghanistan to identify the terror hideouts that Afghanistan claims exist in Pakistan.

"Our view is that we have two good friends and two fierce fighters in the war on terror," Rice said following meetings with Musharraf and Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri.

Musharraf became an unlikely ally of the Bush administration following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when he pledged cooperation against terrorists who traveled easily between Pakistan and the lawless Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan.

Karzai has criticized Pakistan for not doing enough to go after terrorists along the mountainous border between the two nations.

The deadliest fighting in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 has killed more than 500 people, mostly militants, since mid-May and raised fears of a Taliban resurgence.

Afghan officials have said the Taliban is making an all-out push to scare Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Romania from deploying some 6,000 troops to the region.

Outside Kabul, there is little visible evidence of improvements in infrastructure or services since the Taliban regime was ousted.

That has allowed forces loyal to the hard-line Islamic regime to regain strength and sympathy in their former strongholds in the poorer southern provinces of Uruzgan, Helmand, Zabul and Kandahar.

The Taliban also is being fueled by the return of a flourishing drug trade. Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world's heroin supply with its poppy crop, and the profits of drug trafficking are helping fund the militants.

"She was not captured because she was French and not for economic motives either. She was taken in order to secure the release of some 500 guerrilla fighters," he said.

Betancourt, 44, has a French passport by virtue of a 1981 marriage, and the French government has taken a special interest in her kidnapping. She was captured in February 2002 after going to meet FARC leaders in the country's demilitarized zone.

Reyes repeated the FARC's offer to exchange Betancourt as well as "three CIA agents", military commanders and police officers held prisoner for more than six years and some political leaders in return for the 500 guerrillas.