Demonstrators pass by trash containers emptied in a street during a demonstration to protest against the garbage crisis on 21 May.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Friday he would rely on the army to face down protests over his plans to end a trash crisis in the southern city of Naples.
The conservative billionaire has made cleaning up Naples a priority for his three-week-old government, after the city’s waste-high piles of rotting rubbish scared off tourists and damaged residents’ health, Reuters reported.
His plans to open a new landfill site have sparked riots by angry local residents, but Berlusconi said he would not be intimidated by the protests and said those who tried to interfere with the dumping would be prosecuted.
He also defended his proposals, announced on May 21, to use the army to protect landfill sites.
“We will use national force--the army,“ said Berlusconi, holding his second cabinet meeting in Naples in just over a week to signal his commitment to the issue.
“Whoever hopes that we’ll back off should know that we’re convinced that the state must finally do what is necessary.“

Chronic Problem
Trash has been piling up in the streets of Naples since the end of last year, when all dumps were declared full. The problem is complicated further by the involvement of the local mafia, or “Camorra,“ in illegal waste disposal for Italian industry.
Berlusconi said he aimed to definitively fix the chronic problem within the first three years of his five-year term.
He defended his package of legislation to address the crisis, which his cabinet approved just over a week ago. A government official said on Friday soldiers might also soon take over trash sorting centers.
“What’s at stake are the basic rules to avoid slipping from democracy to anarchy,“ Berlusconi said.
House Arrest
A judge in Naples earlier this week ordered 25 people, including employees at units of construction company Imperil, to be put under house arrest for alleged irregularities in waste management activities in southern Italy.
One of those investigated, but not put under arrest, was the prefect or police chief of Naples, Alessandro Pans, who has had a key role in overseeing the government’s response to the rubbish crisis. Pans denies any wrongdoing.
Berlusconi said he wanted to create a special prosecutor’s office to supervise the trash investigations.
Antonio Di Petrol, a former anti-graft magistrate who is a now a leading centre-left politician, criticized the move and warned it could undermine work by local prosecutors.
“No to the ’super prosecutor’ on trash ... It doesn’t make sense. The magistrates are doing their jobs,“ he said.

Georgia told the UN Security Council on Friday that it has stopped conducting surveillance flights over one of its breakaway regions.
The Georgian Ambassador to the UN, Irakli Alasania, said his country stopped the flights after the United Nations released a report Monday that criticized the practice while investigating the shooting down of one of the aircraft, AP said.
The Georgian drone was shot down over Abkhazia on April 20, and a video it transmitted before being destroyed shows a fighter jet firing a missile at it. UN observers said the plane was shot down by a Russian fighter--the latest incident to raise the tensions between Russia and Georgia.
Russia denies the charges.
“Since the (UN) report was issued, Georgian side stopped over flights to honor the words of the current report,“ Alasania said. But, he added “it doesn’t mean that we will not use these military capabilities if the threat will occur in the region.“
Abkhazia and another territory, South Ossetia, have been under separatist control since the 1990s. They seek either independence from Georgia or absorption into Russia.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)have shown no sign they are genuine about wanting peace even though the door remains open for a return to negotiations, a senior Sri Lankan official said Saturday.
“We are looking for a negotiated end to this conflict... so far they have shown no inclination to enter into any constructive dialogue with a view to ending this conflict,“ Palitha Kohona, secretary with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told AFP on the sidelines of a regional security summit.
He said “the LTTE is free to come back to the negotiating table but... must do so genuinely with a commitment to negotiating a sustainable peace and for that it must also leave aside its weaponry.“
Kohona’s comments at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit came as the rejected government plans to devolve more power to the island’s north and east, and said they killed 31 troops in the latest fighting, a pro-rebel website said.
There was no immediate comment from Sri Lanka’s Defence Ministry.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej warned Saturday he would use force to disperse demonstrators who have vowed to continue protests demanding his resignation, AP said.
“I am urging the people to stay away from the rally site as soon as possible as the police and soldiers are preparing to use force to disperse the mobs,“ Samak said in an unscheduled nationwide television address.
His comments came as rumors flew that Thailand could have its second military coup in two years. Samak’s government took power in February after elections meant to restore democracy to Thailand after the military seized power in 2006.
Supreme Military Commander Boonsang Niempradit confirmed the military had been put on standby.
“The armed forces have been ordered to use force to remove the mobs, but at the first stage, police force will do the job and soldiers will help only if police are unable to control the situation,“ Boonsang told reporters.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports that North Korea has test-fired three short-range missiles into waters off its west coast.
The missiles were fired on Friday into the Yellow Sea off Jeungsan County, some 40 kilometers west of Pyongyang.
The testing was part of a military training exercise involving Russian-designed Styx ship-to-ship missiles with a range of 46 kilometers.
The North conducted a similar launch in March in what some analysts said was a display of anger at Washington and a new conservative government in Seoul that has taken a tough line toward its communist neighbor.
North and South Korea have clashed in the past over the delineation of their sea border in the West Sea. The area is a rich fishing ground.
Relations between the two countries have been tense in recent months since the new South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office in February with a vow to take a tougher line on the communist North.