Italy braced for pre-election bombs

The bomb blew a door off a central Rome building but caused no injuries

ROME, Italy -- Italy has been warned to brace itself for more possible bombings as the general election nears.

A day after a bomb exploded in central Rome, interior minister Enzo Bianco said: "This is the time to be most careful. Every electoral period is always difficult, emotional."

The Rome bomb destroyed the entrance of a building housing an Italian-U.S. institute.

Another bomb, which was set to have exploded about the same time, was destroyed by police in the northern city of Turin.

"Italy is exposed to a high risk of terrorism, like all Western countries," Bianco said.

He added there was a risk of international tension fomenting trouble in Italy, the scene of domestic and Middle East-related violence in the 1970s and early 1980s.

E-mail claims of responsibility

The bombs were an attempt by groups to influence the May 13 polls, when Italians will elect a new parliament, said Luciano Violante, speaker of the lower house Chamber of Deputies.

"Whoever planned the attack in Rome intends to become part of the electoral campaign with attempts to destabilise," Violante said.

A group calling itself The Nucleus of Revolutionary and Proletarian Initiatives sent two long documents by e-mail to a national newspaper claiming responsibility for the Rome bomb.

Police have been investigating the validity of the claim.

The group's name had also been used to claim responsibility for a device planted in Rome last May which failed to explode.

Seven-times former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who headed several governments when terrorism was rampant in the 1970s, also expressed concern over the bombings.

"If the bombs were just a one-off, then that's one thing. If this signals the start of a 'terrorist' campaign, then it is very worrying, particularly because the period before the election is a very delicate one," Andreotti said.

Police investigating the blast said before the claim was made that they could not rule out the bomb being linked to the Group of Eight (G8) summit to be held in Genoa in July.

The summit, to be attended by U.S. President George W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders from Italy, Japan, Germany, Britain, France and Canada, runs from July 20-22.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Left group claims Rome bomb
April 10, 2001

Italian Parliament

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