Italy's new waste czar has promised a "common sense" solution to the Naples trash crisis, Italian News Agency ANSA said on Wednesday.
Speaking after his first day on the job, ex-national police chief Gianni De Gennaro said he would approach his task "with the conviction that problems can be solved with a rationale of common sense, balance, dialogue and direct and transparent communication".
"The answers won't be long in coming. I'm accustomed to keeping my word."
De Gennaro stressed that the Italian army, which has been drafted in to start clearing mounds of rubbish from streets, would not have any role in policing the crisis, which has seen a string of street clashes outside a disputed dump.
The army would only provide "expertise and logistical support," De Gennaro said.
The new commissioner, who made his name fighting the Mafia, has been given a four-month mandate to clean up the Campania region, bring new systems on line and banish the shadow of the Camorra crime syndicate.
The Italian government has already found several local sites to dump the rubbish clogging the streets of Naples and Campania, according to ANSA.
At a meeting on Wednesday, Premier Romano Prodi urged the governors of Italy's 20 other regions to accept shipments of Campanian trash to be dumped or burned.
Prodi tried to impress on the governors that the problem had become "a real national emergency" in terms of the damage it has done to Italy's image abroad, the Molise governor told reporters.
Waste crises have hit Campania regularly for the last 15 years, coupled with protests against new disposal plans.
The incinerator that might have averted the crisis was held up for years by protests led by Green activists.
According to Italian environmental organizations, the region's residents face serious health risks from the tons of toxic waste that have been buried across the region, much of it illegally.
Local cancer rates - especially for liver tumors - are well above the national average.
Italy's image has suffered from TV pictures of the current emergency being beamed abroad.
The European Parliament is set to vote Thursday evening on whether to ask the European Commission to take action on the crisis.
Source:Xinhua
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