The prosecutor's office here on Tuesday ordered that an autopsy be performed to determine the exact cause of death of a 38-year-old woman who had been at the center of a highly controversial right-to-die case.

Eluana Englaro died Monday evening four days after feeding tube, which had kept her alive in a permanent vegetative state for 17 years, was removed in accordance with a high court ruing and the wishes of her family.

She is believed to have died from kidney or heart failure.

The prosecutor's office said that the girl's parents, Beppino and Sati Englaro, who had fought for ten years to allow their daughter to die a natural death in accordance with her expressed wishes, will be allowed to view her body before the autopsy.

The Eluana case sparked a national debate on the right to die and living wills which cut across party lines and even caused some division among Catholics.

At the time of her death the Senate was in the middle of a debate on an emergency government bill which would have made it illegal for carers of people ''unable to take care of themselves'' to suspend artificial feeding.

On the news of her death the Senate observed a minute of silence but this was then followed by a near floor row with members of the government People of Freedom (PdL) party saying Eluana had been ''murdered'', while the opposition Democratic Party accused the PdL of ''politically exploiting'' a personal tragedy.

An institutional polemic then developed when the PdL's Senate whip, Maurizio Gasparri, implied that President Giorgio Napolitano was in part responsible for the girl's death because of his refusal to sign a government decree which would have overruled the court's decision to allow the feeding tube to be removed.

Napolitano refused to sign the decree on constitutional grounds and it was then represented as a an emergency bill.

House Speaker Gianfranco Fini scolded Gasparri by saying he should ''learn when to shut up''.

Fini was the head of the National Alliance, which has been merged into the PdL, and Gasparri was once one of is chief lieutenants in the right-wing party.

The Senate had been set to vote on the emergency bill on Tuesday but party whips have since decided to send the measure back to the commission stage to be revamped as a broader overall law on living wills.

The conservative daily Libero on Tuesday quoted Premier Silvio Berlusconi as saying that Eluana ''did not die a natural death, she was murdered''.

Eluna fell into an irreversible vegetative state following an automobile accident when she was 21.