Walter Veltroni, who hopes to defy polls by winning Italy's general election in just over a week, accused his rivals yesterday of waging an uncivil campaign against him, as a former ally predicted his defeat.

Veltroni was set to campaign again yesterday in the Campania region, where his centre-left party has endured withering criticism for its inability to sort out the basic job of collecting and disposing of rubbish in regional capital Naples.

Poll favourite Silvio Berlusconi, a two-time prime minister who Veltroni says shares past blame for Campania's woes, said on Friday he would base his next government in Naples until the ribbish crisis was resolved.

Berlusconi has also begun to attack Veltroni's record as former mayor of Rome. He is publishing a book which he will send to every home in Rome accusing Veltroni of leaving the Eternal City mired in €9 billion of debt. "Berlusconi's way of waging an election campaign is absolutely uncivil," Veltroni griped in a television interview.

Veltroni is walking a fine line ahead of the April 13-14 ballot, campaigning on a platform of change, despite hailing from the same political party as outgoing Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Prodi's government collapsed in January when Catholic centrists rebelled against him in a confidence vote.

Veltroni decided his Democratic Party needed to run without the hard left, which helped make Prodi's time in office so unstable.

A former ally from the hard left, communist candidate for prime minister Fausto Bertinotti, lashed out against Veltroni yesterday by saying even Berlusconi was more effective at speaking to the working-man.

"Certainly, Veltroni will lose," Bertinotti told newspaper Il Giornale, which is owned by Berlusconi's family.

"He has a strong image but stays on the surface, he doesn't allow people to dream and therefore he doesn't enter into contact, for example, with the working class."

Veltroni recalled that Bertinotti was hardly a dependable ally, having brought down Prodi's government in 1998. "Bertinotti's position is nothing new," Veltroni told reporters. "I'll leave to him (to explain) his wishes that I not win. I'm working for victory."

Veltroni is chasing Berlusconi's consistent lead in polls of between five and nine per cent for the lower house of parliament, though they are heading for such a close result in the upper house or Senate there is talk of a post-electoral 'Grand Coalition'.