Italian Police, Leftists Clash Against Backdrop of Strikes

ROME —  Italy’s economic tensions exploded violently Friday in central Rome, where riot police firing tear gas battled left-wing militants who had tried to sabotage a huge rally of striking workers.

Sirens echoed through cobblestone alleys, and heavily armed police mingled with nonplussed tourists in the ancient heart of the city. It was street theater counterpoint to painful government attempts at balancing its books.

The violence broke out in the piazza and streets surrounding the Renaissance cathedral of St. John Latern in a working-class section of the city not far from the Colosseum.

Police Chief Vicenzo Parisi said that about 250 left-wing militants throwing stones and wielding clubs stormed a peaceful protest by public- and private-sector workers who had marched from the ancient Roman chariot race stadium, the Circus Maximus, to rally before the cathedral. Police estimated the crowd at 60,000; union leaders put it at 100,000.

About 60 people, including 23 policemen and six union security guards, were treated in nearby emergency rooms. Police said they detained 101 demonstrators and booked eight of them.

Helmeted police fired tear gas and charged the leftists with batons in a swirling series of skirmishes through city streets. Police later staked out main intersections and rerouted traffic away from central Piazza Venezia, where an afternoon demonstration by independent unions unfolded without incident.

Friday’s protests form part of an accelerating skein of nationwide strike action against the government of Prime Minister Giuliano Amato. On Friday, the strikers shut public offices and schools and interrupted public transport in Rome during a three-hour strike.

Printers struck La Repubblica, Italy’s largest newspaper, and the Rome edition of the International Herald Tribune. A separate walkout paralyzed Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport.

The protests--and innumerable more being scheduled for coming weeks--attack government austerity measures that have abolished Italy’s traditional sliding wage scale that enabled workers to keep pace with living costs.

In addition, Amato’s austerity package will freeze salaries and government hiring, raise the retirement age and curtail free health benefits to higher-income families.

After a decade in which its economy grew dramatically at the cost of huge government deficits and debt, Italy is now pledged to austerity as a means of recovering economic direction and the confidence of its European Community partners.