Newsgroups: bit.listserv.hellas
Date:         Fri, 2 Oct 1992 19:01:54 -0400
Reply-To:     "(Anastassiades - Advanced Rotorcraft Technology / NASA Ames)"
              <tassos@ART.DNET.NASA.GOV>
From:         "(Anastassiades - Advanced Rotorcraft Technology / NASA Ames)"
              <tassos@ART.DNET.NASA.GOV>
Subject:      Italia - Epeisodia
Comments: To: hellas@brownvm.bitnet@6913.DNET.NASA.GOV

Italia: Mou thymizei olo kai pio poly Ellada prin apo liges
bdomades...
Kalo Savvatokyriako,

Tassos Anastassiades
Mountain View, CA

************************************************************************

Subject: Police battle left-wing extremists at anti-government protest
Keywords: international, non-usa government, government, police, legal,
	violent demonstrations, demonstrations, trade union, labor
Date: 2 Oct 92 21:19:39 GMT
Location: italy
ACategory: international
Slugword: italy-crisis
Priority: regular
Format: regular
ANPA: Wc: 523; Id: z4873; Sel: xxigf; Adate: 10-2-515ped
Codes: yigfrxx., yilprit., yinvrit., yiuurit.


	ROME (UPI) -- Hundreds of armed police used tear gas and batons Friday
to disperse left-wing extremists who disrupted a protest by 130,000
public service workers against the government's austerity economic
program.
	Officials estimated about 400 extremists, known at ``autonomists,''
took part in the violence that ruined the effect of the protest by
public sector employees, who had traveled to Rome on special trains and
buses.
	The public sector employees were joined in two separate marches
through the city by workers from factories in the Lazio region around
Rome who staged a one-day general strike that closed public offices and
schools and disrupted city transportation.
	The left-wing extremists repeatedly tried to infiltrate the marching
columns and pelted police and labor union security men with empty
bottles, steel ball-bearings, stones and other objects.
	Police used tear gas and repeatedly charged the extremists with
batons flailing to disperse them.
	At the main rally in the vast San Giovanni square, near the southern
gate to the city, the tear gas was so intense that most of the
demonstrators -- estimated by police at around 130,000 -- fled before
union leaders had finished their speeches.
	``The intention of the autonomy extremists was clearly to transform
Rome into a battlefield, to prevent the people demonstrating and to put
a gag on the unions,'' Fulvio Vento, secretary-general of the Socialist
UIL labor union for the Lazio region, told reporters.
	Police said about 60 demonstrators and 21 police were treated for
injuries caused by the violence and eight were admitted to hospitals
with head and eye injuries.
	Police took 101 of the extremists to headquarters for questioning and
later formally arrested five of them.
	The disruption of the Rome demonstration followed similar extremist
violence in most of Italy's major cities in the past two weeks as
workers in the various regions obeyed a call by Italy's three mainstream
labor unions for a series of demonstrations and strikes.
	The unions have threatened to call a nationwide general strike,
possibly next week, unless Prime Minister Giuliano Amato scraps parts of
his austerity program which they claim is unfair to the workers.
	But the extremists have also vented their rage against the union
leaders, whom they accuse of ``selling out'' to the government.
	Socialist Prime Minister Giuilano Amato's economic package is aimed
at achieving a $75 billion saving in the 1993 Finance Bill by means of
drastic cuts in Welfare State pillars such as the state medical service
and pensions and a broad range of new taxes.
	The public sector workers face a total wage freeze until the end of
1993 and the loss of a wide range of benefits.
	Amato has warned that if Parliament makes significant changes in his
economic package he will resign his four-party coalition government,
formed three months ago after Parliamentary elections in April
devastated the traditional political parties but produced no alternative
lineup to take their place.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU