Italian right adds Rome to laurels, targets crime

Silvio Berlusconi's conservatives vowed to use an unexpected double victory in Italian national and Rome city elections to crack down on crime.

Mr Berlusconi's People of Freedom party and its anti-immigrant Northern League ally took control of both houses of the new parliament which sat for the first time on Tuesday. The media magnate will be sworn in as prime minister by next week, his third spell in office.

Already relishing the prospect of the strongest parliament in decades after an unexpectedly decisive win in the April 13-14 national vote, Mr Berlusconi will also have the support of Rome's first right-wing mayor since 1943, the former fascist Gianni Alemanno.

"We can work properly, Rome will once again take up its role as capital, cleaner and safer," said Mr Berlusconi. "It was already a strong government but it will now be consolidated by a firmer relationship with the capital."

The conservatives also run the financial capital, Milan, leaving only the largely ceremonial, toothless presidency in the hands of the left.

Italy's communists, once the largest such party in the West, have no parliamentary seat for the first time in 50 years.

The Rome mayoral contest won by Alemanno of the National Alliance - a conservative party with fascist roots now absorbed at national level by Mr Berlusconi's party - dealt a second blow to the centre left, which ran the capital non-stop for 15 years.

Defeat was all the more symbolic as the loser was Francesco Rutelli, beaten by Mr Berlusconi to the premiership in 2001, and the outgoing mayor was Walter Veltroni, who lost to 71-year-old Berlusconi in the national vote two weeks ago.

Mr Rutelli, culture minister in the government of Romano Prodi that collapsed in January after just 20 months in office, said the "decisive element" was Romans' concerns about crime. He acknowledged the centre left's "limitations" on the issue.