Naples Exports Waste - and Protests - Around Italy

Islanders in Sardinia scuffled with police when a ship loaded with refuse arrived from Naples late on Thursday.

Authorities in Naples were shipping mountains of trash to other parts of Italy on Friday, but the deliveries touched off skirmishes outside the region for the first time in the weeks-long rubbish crisis.

Islanders in Sardinia scuffled with police when a ship loaded with refuse arrived from Naples late on Thursday. Sardinia was the first region to accept some of the 100,000 tonnes of waste that had piled up in the Naples area.

"It's been a busy night," said Silvio Saffioti, the head of the fire brigade in the Sardinian capital, Cagliari. "We were called out 25 times to put out fires in 48 (garbage containers) and three burning cars."

Prime Minister Romano Prodi has given former national police chief Gianni De Gennaro four months to sort out the crisis, the result of decades of political weakness, corruption and heavy mafia involvement in waste disposal.

His government has appealed to Italy's regional authorities to take a share of the waste mountain which has built up since refuse collection in Naples came to a halt before Christmas after dumps in the area were declared full.

Defying protests from the centre-right opposition and Sardinian separatists, Renatu Soru, the island's governor, said the rest of Italy had a duty to show solidarity with Naples.

"When someone is drowning or a house is burning, first you save the people then you think about the rest," he told Corriere della Sera daily.

"HOOLIGAN GANGS"

The waste crisis is a massive challenge for Prodi and his centre-left colleagues who run the local administration in Naples, where thousands of people took to the streets in protest this week and one suburb became a lawless no-go area at night.

Residents in the Pianura neighbourhood have blocked the streets to most traffic since Saturday to prevent authorities reopening a waste dump that was closed 11 years ago.

The Interior Ministry has vowed to get tough on "hooligan gangs" which roam the streets, clashing with the police and setting fire to trash piles and vehicles. Fire brigades only enter the area under police escort.

De Gennaro, named by Prodi as 'trash tsar' this week, arrived in Naples on Wednesday and has yet to say whether he will force open the Pianura dump.

Prodi hopes De Gennaro will succeed where a succession of other waste commissioners have failed. The first was appointed in 1994 to clean up waste disposal in the Naples region and take it out of the hands of the local mafia, the Camorra.

Fourteen years and 2 billion euros ($2.94 billion) of public money later, the city is still searching for a solution. A huge incinerator supposed to open at the end of 2007 may not come on line until 2009.

The European Commission has said it may take Italy to court over its failure to comply with rules of waste management.