The Italian government vowed on Monday to be ready with a "radical" solution within 24 hours on the Naples trash emergency that has continued for several years.
"This is not the time for polemics. We're working on a radical solution to the trash emergency. Within 24 hours we'll be ready," Italian government spokesman Silvio Sircana said.
Prodi, who met Interior Minister Giuliano Amato and Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio during the day, would hold an inter-ministerial meeting on the crisis on Tuesday morning, Sircana said.
Political tensions provoked by the trash emergency intensified on Monday, as Naples Mayor Rosa Russo Iervolino - once Prodi's interior minister - openly accused him of inaction.
The Naples trash emergency erupted again Monday morning as scores of protesters clashed with police trying to clear a way to a dump at the center of the crisis.
Locals threw rocks and metal bolts as police escorted a bulldozer to try to remove an improvised rampart erected overnight at the entrance to the dump.
Police responded with their batons. At least three people were hurt and taken to hospital.
A former interior minister, Beppe Pisanu of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia Party, said on Italian radio that the recurrent trash emergencies of the last decade had been stoked by the local Mafia, the Camorra, which makes a lucrative business out of waste recycling.
Other members of the opposition criticized Pecoraro Scanio's Green Party for allegedly impeding the opening of incinerators to cope with the recurrent emergencies.
There were fresh calls for the resignation of Antonio Bassolino, the regional governor who for years was emergency waste commissioner.
Source:Xinhua
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