Berlusconi Seeks to Woo Anti-immigrant Party

Italians yesterday got their first taste of what life will be like under their next government as Silvio Berlusconi moved to appease the newly-powerful Northern League with pledges of lower taxes, more police and special new camps for the identification of jobless foreigners.

"One of the things to do is to close the frontiers and set up more camps to identify foreign citizens who don't have jobs and are forced into a life of crime," he said in a television interview. He added that the country also needed "more local police constituting an army of good in the squares and streets to come between Italian people and the army of evil".

His comments were seemingly at odds not only with Italy's open borders under the Schengen accords but also with the temperate tone he had adopted on election night.

Berlusconi appeared to be reacting to the success of the anti-immigrant Northern League. Umberto Bossi's populist movement, which fought its campaign on a law-and-order platform, almost doubled its share of the vote. It will be the third biggest force in the new legislature and its representatives will be in a position to deprive Berlusconi of his majority in both chambers.

Berlusconi's first diplomatic engagement will be a meeting with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. The Ansa news agency reported that they would hold talks in Sardinia, where the billionaire media tycoon has a villa.

Berlusconi said he had emerged from his triumph in the general election "oozing energy from every pore". His Freedom Folk and its allies won outright majorities in both houses of parliament in a vote that swept many of Italy's smaller parties out of the legislature.

The leader of the right said his first cabinet meeting would abolish local authority property tax and scrap the taxation of overtime and productivity bonuses. He said it would also introduce a reward of €1,000 (£800) for every newborn child.

His other priority tasks would be to tackle the refuse crisis in Naples and ensure Italy's failing national airline, Alitalia, remained "at the service of tourism and the Italian economy".

Berlusconi said he planned to spend "three days a week" in Naples, though what he will do there is unclear since the piles of rubbish that accumulated earlier this year have already been cleared under a scheme introduced by the outgoing government.

Italy's next prime minister promised a streamlined cabinet. He has indicated that he will give back the finance portfolio to Giulio Tremonti and said that his foreign minister would be the EU's justice commissioner, Franco Frattini.

Berlusconi has also vowed to hand ministerial portfolios to at least four women. Asked if he wanted a Spanish-style cabinet with more women than men, he said José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero had formed a team that was "too pink" and added that it would not be possible "because in Italy there is a prevalence of men".

The White House said President Bush had telephoned to congratulate Berlusconi on his victory. In neighbouring Albania the prime minister, Sali Berisha, convened a press conference to hail Berlusconi's triumph. He called it "a great event for the centre-right in Italy, Albania, and the whole of Europe". One of the planks in the electoral platform of Berlusconi's Freedom Folk was a plan to fund the building of nuclear power stations in Albania and elsewhere in the Balkans to provide electricity by undersea cable to Italy.