ROME, May 16 (Reuters) - A plan by Italy's 5-Star Movement and League to ask the European Central Bank to forgive 250 billion euros ($296 billion) of Italian debt was never in an official draft of a government programme, the League's economic spokesman told Reuters.
"The cancellation of the debt has never appeared in any official draft," Borghi said on Wednesday. "What we are proposing is that for the purposes the (EU) Stability Pact, the debt bought under QE (by the ECB) does not count in countries' debt-to-GDP ratios."
Borghi is a member of the group working on a common programme as the two anti-system parties seek to form a government more than 10 weeks after a national election ended with a hung parliament.
Italy's benchmark bond yields rose in the morning after a draft of the government programme leaked late on Tuesday.
($1 = 0.8441 euros) (Reporting by Gavin Jones; writing by Steve Scherer)