ROME — Italian Premier Mario Monti told the country’s president Saturday that he intends to resign since Silvio Berlusconi withdrew his support for the year-old government of technocrats and intends to quit as soon as Parliament passes critical budget legislation.

Only hours earlier, Berlusconi announced he would run again for premier, aiming for a comeback just a year after he quit under the pressure of financial markets as Italy teetered toward the brink of financial disaster.

The office of President Giorgio Napolitano, who met for nearly two hours with Monti at the presidential palace, said the premier told the head of state that without the support of Berlusconi’s party he could no longer effectively govern Italy, which is mired in recession and trying to emerge from the eurozone sovereign debt crisis.

Monti, an economist who heads a nonelected Cabinet of technocrats that replaced Berlusconi’s government a year ago, will quickly consult with political leaders to see if they can pull together to pass a budget and financial-stability law deemed critical to healing Italy’s finances.

Once he does that, Monti will “hand in his irrevocable resignation in the hands of the president,” the presidential palace said.

Before an election date can be set, Napolitano must dissolve Parliament ahead of its full term’s end in late April. Elections must then be held within 70 days of Parliament’s dissolution.

The palace communique quoted Monti as concluding that Berlusconi’s conservative Freedom People party essentially had made a “judgment of categorical nonconfidence on the government” and its strategy.

In comments to lawmakers Friday, Berlusconi’s No. 2 aide, party secretary Angelino Alfano, had blamed Monti’s austerity strategy for failing to jump-start the economy.

A year after resigning from office, Berlusconi, 76, a fourterm prime minister, said his People of Liberty party had been unable to find a credible successor, so the task of commanding the party had once again fallen to him.

“To win you need an acknowledged leader,” he said. “It’s not as though we didn’t look for this leader. We did, and how, but there isn’t one, and so ...” he said, his voice trailing off before he laughed.

Polls show support for Berlusconi’s party trailing far behind the Democratic Party, and even behind the Five Star Movement, an anti-establishment group that campaigned on a platform of cleaning up Italian politics. Several lawmakers with People of Liberty have been arrested in recent months in scandals.

Though he appears unlikely to win an election, Berlusconi could still receive enough votes to hold some sway in parliament.

He said Saturday that the country is worse off than when he left it a year ago.

In an entry on his Facebook page, Berlusconi, who was convicted of tax fraud in October and is standing trial in Milan on charges of paying to have sex with an underage girl, said he did not miss being prime minister.

“I return with desperation to public office,” he wrote, “and I do it once again out of a sense of responsibility.”

Information for this article was contributed by Frances D’Emilio of The Associated Press and by Elisabeth Povoledo of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 12/09/2012