Two weeks after being sworn in as Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi kept an election promise yesterday by taking his Cabinet to Naples to declare war on the city's rubbish dumps, crime wave and illegal immigrants.

Vowing to “wash the piazzas of uncertainty”, he approved a decree opening emergency landfills in specially designated military zones.

The Army will have the power to stop residents protesting against rubbish tips in their neighbourhood and the Mafia from interfering with the lucrative business of waste disposal.

Officials said that the location of the tips would be kept secret to prevent protests from residents alarmed by high dioxin levels in waste, but also to wrongfoot the Camorra, the Naples Mafia, which makes huge profits from running dumps and transporting rubbish.

The rubbish crisis had inflicted “incalculable damage on Italy's image in the world”, Mr Berlusconi said. “I want the splendid and beautiful city of Naples to take on a new lease of life.”

He appointed Guido Bertolaso, the former head of civil protection, as the commissioner responsible for the Naples emergency, with the rank of deputy minister. Attempts to interfere with refuse removal would be punished with jail sentences of up to one year.

Waste collection came to a halt in Naples at Christmas. There have also been delays in transporting waste out of the city. Ecolog, a state company which has taken 20 million tonnes of rubbish to German incinerators in the past eight years, is said by Naples prosecutors to have been intimidated by Camorra gangs.

There are an estimated 50,000 tonnes of rubbish in the Campania region, and officially 5,000 tonnes in Naples, though a tour of the city suggests that this is

an underestimate. The European Union said this month that it was taking the Italian Government to the European Court over mishandling of the region's waste management.

The Cabinet also adopted a decree on crime, drawn up by Roberto Maroni, the Interior Minister and deputy leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League, which authorises the expulsion of illegal immigrants, tougher border controls, greater powers to mayors to “guarantee public safety”, and the confiscation of property rented to illegal immigrants.

A separate draft law making illegal immigration a crime punishable by up to four years' imprisonment will be debated in Parliament, along with with tougher penalties for attacks on the elderly or disabled and a provision that those applying for asylum must be kept in secure camps until a decision about their case is made.

A clause in the draft law, aimed above all at Romanians and Roma Gypsies - blamed by many Italians for street crime - lays down that EU citizens entering Italy must show they have “sufficient economic resources” to stay for more than three months.

Mr Berlusconi said that the law would be passed by the end of July. The European Commission pledged that the laws would be scrutinised for “any type of racism or xenophobia”.

A thousand police officers guarded the Cabinet meeting at the Naples police headquarters, formerly the Foreign Ministry during the reign of the Bourbon monarchy, as ten protest marches tried to reach the centre.

One slogan read “Sainthood immediately for Berlusconi - if he eliminates rubbish and criminals”.

For the first time in months streets in the centre of Naples had been cleared of piles of rubbish, but refuse remained not far from the centre and in suburbs. “They have cleared the rubbish from around the Royal Palace but dumped it on us” one resident said.

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found