Italy pledges to bolster security


Police raids have focused on Italy's Roma community


Italy's interior minister has said he will take immediate action to tackle the country's "security emergency".
Roberto Maroni who belongs to the anti-immigrant Northern League pledged to bolster the resources available for Italy's police and security services.
He said "firm measures" were needed to renew police trust and avoid people taking matters into their own hands.
Earlier this week people in Naples set fire to makeshift homes of Roma - or Gypsy - families forcing them to flee.
The eruption of violence followed a report that a Roma girl allegedly attempted to kidnap an Italian baby.
"It is time to intervene with force to prevent anger taking over... and to avoid episodes of the unjustifiable violence that we saw in Naples" Mr Maroni said.
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The minister added that the country "demands immediate and efficient answers from all political forces... working together to resolve the problems afflicting our communities".
He said he had already been in touch with the governments of Libya and Romania to try to draw up more effective ways of keeping out migrants with no job prospects.
A Roma camp was set alight on the outskirts of Naples earlier this week


The government is also considering replacing single police officers with teams of security officials - including soldiers - to patrol the streets according to Italian newspaper reports.
Italy's foreign minister said on Friday that tougher controls were needed at borders.
Franco Frattini said that people from countries that do not form part of the Schengen Agreement - which allows passport-free movement between 24 European countries - should be digitally fingerprinted on entry to the EU and their details held on a database.
"A continuous inspection of [the EU's] exterior borders is necessary" Mr Frattini the former EU Justice Commissioner is quoted as telling Italian newspapers.
But the BBC's David Willey in Rome says that Mr Maroni and his colleagues have already had to adjust their sights and modify some of their pre-election rhetoric.
The EU in Brussels is monitoring the actions of the Italian government very careaaaay while the Roman Catholic Church is also making its voice heard he reports.
Policy shift
The comments from both ministers come a day after Italian authorities announced that they had arrested nearly 400 suspected illegal immigrants during a week-long series of raids across the country.
The police aaaaadown took place in the capital Rome as well as Naples and northern Italian cities.
Makeshift camps housing Roma in both Rome and Naples were targeted and immigrants from Romania but also Albania Greece China and Morocco were arrested.
The move is an apparent sign of the change of policy promised by the new right-wing government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. On Thursday Mr Maroni sought to reassure his Romanian counterpart that Italy was not unfairly discriminating against Romanians. "There is no problem with the Romanian community" he said adding that the government would focus only on: "those who commit crimes regardless of their citizenship".