ROME – A prosecutor said yesterday he would ask Italy’s new government to send an extradition request to America for 22 purported CIA agents accused of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric, after the Justice Ministry under Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a close American ally, refused to pass along his initial one.

Prosecutor Armando Spataro said in a statement he would “reiterate the extradition request as soon as the new government is formed, convinced it will obtain a different decision from the next justice minister.”

Yesterday, Justice Minister Roberto Castelli told Milan prosecutors who had accused the Americans that he had decided against forwarding their request to Washington, a ministry statement said.

Justice Castelli, who previously called Mr. Spataro “anti-American,” had indicated he was unwilling to press the case, which had already strained American-Italian relations.

The prosecutors have accused 22 Americans of involvement in what they say was the 2003 kidnapping of the cleric – terrorist suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.

They claim he was snatched by the CIA on a Milan street and spirited away to a American-Italian air base, flown to Germany and then to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.

Romano Prodi, who heads the coalition that won the elections, said yesterday he didn’t know the legal issues surrounding the case and couldn’t respond to a question about what his government would do with the matter, which could be an important test case for Italian-American relations.

Mr. Prodi has given no indication of possible Cabinet ministers. Mr. Prodi opposed the Iraq war and has stressed the importance of Italy’s relations with its European allies but says he wants a “constructive” relationship with Washington.

“Honestly, I didn’t put my mind to that,” he said at the foreign press club when asked about the CIA case.