By Stephen Brown

ROME, April 27 (Reuters) - Amnesty International said on Friday it had asked Italy to lead a campaign for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty.

Amnesty's secretary general said Italy, which has sought a U.N. resolution for a ban, and like-minded nations should ratify such treaties to set an example.

This would ensure that any U.N. resolution "does not become just a piece of paper but can make a real difference to those sitting on death row", Irene Khan told a news conference.

She said she had asked Prime Minister Romano Prodi to rally a "global coalition" against executions.

The Italian Grand Duchy of Tuscany was the first state in the world to abolish the death penalty in 1786, she added.

Amnesty's 2006 data showed a fall in worldwide executions to 1,591 from 2,148 in 2005, and a fall in the number of countries imposing the death penalty.

Khan said the death penalty "is now the exception rather than the norm and hardliners are being isolated".

Some 99 countries ban capital punishment while 69 still use it. Six countries -- China, Iran, Iraq, the United States, Pakistan and Sudan -- account for about 90 percent of the total, and China the bulk of these.

Since China does not publish statistics, Amnesty bases its count on a conservative estimate of 1,000 executions a year, although experts say the true figure could be as high as 8,000. China has launched a review of the death penalty process.

The United States, by contrast, had its lowest number of executions in three decades last year, Khan said.

Italy lobbied for a U.N. moratorium on the death penalty in the 1990s, and this year began using its temporary seat on the Security Council to lobby for a ban, hoping to take advantage of denunciations of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's hanging.

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