Sports Calendar

In Rome, where Gianni Alemanno, the new right-wing mayor, has vowed to dismantle “nomad camps” to reduce street crime, police raided a Roma camp, loading the inhabitants on to buses and taking them to detention centres. Mr Alemanno has promised to deport 20,000 illegal immigrants.

Today the Berlusconi Cabinet will approve an emergency “security package” drawn up by Robert Maroni, the new Interior Minister and deputy leader of the anti immigrant Northern League. It includes the dismantling of Roma camps, the appointment of “special commissioners” to deal with “the Roma problem” in Rome and Milan, the tightening of border controls and the speeded-up deportation of immigrants who cannot show they have a job or an “adequate” income. Mr Maroni also wants to make illegal immigration a criminal offence.

Mr Berlusconi vowed during last month’s election campaign to curb illegal immigrants, describing them as an “army of evil”. Mr Berlusconi has also pledged to hold a Cabinet meeting in Naples next Wednesday to resolve the continuing rubbish crisis amid fears of an epidemic as warmer weather arrives.

Yesterday Flora Martinelli, the mother who caught the Roma teenager trying to steal her baby at Ponticelli, said she was “very sorry for what has happened. I didn’t think it would come to this”.

But she said, “We have absolutely had it with the Roma, they have to go.” At one of the few remaining nomad camps, terrified Roma people were reluctant to speak. “We are not all criminals” insisted one thirty-year-old man. But at the market opposite the burnt-out Via Malibran camp, local people were unrepentant. “The gypsies don’t work, they don’t wash, and they steal,” said one youth. “This is our version of ethnic cleansing.”

Cristian David, the Romanian Interior Minister, arrived in Rome yesterday for talks on the crisis. Calin Popeascu Tariceanu, the Romanian Prime Minister, said Italy should have followed the example of France and Germany in refusing to allow nomad encampments to spring up. He said a distinction must be drawn between “honest Romanians” with jobs and criminals who “have tainted the image of all Romanians working abroad”.

Giulio Riccio, head of social policy at the Naples council, condemned the “criminal aggression” at the Roma camps, adding “I am ashamed to be Italian”. Rosa Iervolino Russo, the Mayor of Naples, said she deplored “all violent and racist actions”.

Franco Frattini, the Foreign Minister and former EU Commissioner, denied the new Italian government was “xenophobic” but said the Schengen agreement on free movement across EU frontiers needed to be “updated”. It is estimated that there are at last 700,000 illegal immigrants in Italy.

Pietro Fusella, manager of a hotel in Via Chiaia, in Naples’ historic centre, said both the rubbish cisis and the attacks on Roma camps were unjustly damaging the city’s image. “Both problems are in the suburbs, not the centre” he said. He had put up a webcam on the hotel website to show that the street outside was “clean and safe”.

Last year the centre-left government of Romano Prodi expelled over 200 Romanians with criminal records after a Romanian was accused of murdering an Italian woman at a Rome railway station. However, the centre-right swept to power in elections last month, arguing that much tougher measures were needed.

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