Berlusconi comes out fighting after election tirade

ROME, Mar 19 (Reuters) Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi came out fighting today a day after launching a blistering pre-election attack on his adversaries which even a member of his ruling coalition dubbed embarrassing.

Addressing a conference organised by employers' group Confindustria on Saturday, Berlusconi cast aside the agreed question and answer format and launched into a verbal assault on the left, the press and his opponents in the business community.

''I think when the prime minister goes to someone's house he should respect the rules,'' said Agriculture Minister Gianni Alemanno of the right-wing National Alliance (AN) party, adding he was ''embarrassed'' by the outburst.

However, others said Berlusconi's performance would revive his showing in the polls.

AN leader and Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini called Berlusconi's performance ''a moment of truth'' and another centre-right figure, president of the Lombardy region Roberto Formigoni, said Berlusconi was finally showing his true colours.

''When Berlusconi is Berlusconi he is really effective, (his performance) will shake things up because grey conformism turns people away from politics and this country needs political passion.'' Berlusconi kept up his aggressive tones in a television interview today, capitalising on anti-globalisation street violence by youths in Milan a week ago to brand the opposition ''shop window-breakers'' and promising to create more jobs and put more women in government.

On Saturday, Berlusconi railed against industrialists who had sided with the opposition and attacked Confindustria's radio station and Italy's top five newspapers, naming them one by one, for backing the left and fabricating an economic crisis.

''Where is the crisis? It is the left and their newspapers that are inventing a crisis that does not exist in order to get to power?'' he cried.

Italy posted no growth in 2005 for the second time in three years, its exports have been losing market share since the mid 1990s, its public debt rose last year for the first time in a decade and its budget deficit was the highest since 1996.

MEDIA-SAVVY But while Berlusconi's outburst was widely portrayed by the left as a sign of a man who had lost control, it was more probably a calculated move by the media-savvy prime minister to try to shake up a campaign that has been drifting away from him.

Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition has maintained a lead of around 4 points in opinion polls ahead of the April 9-10 election. Berlusconi was widely criticised for a lacklustre showing in a television debate with Prodi last Tuesday.

In Sunday's television interview, Berlusconi tried to remedy criticism that he was too negative and backward-looking in the head-to-head with Prodi by promising that if re-elected he would create a million new jobs and ''full-employment.'' He also said he would make sure at least a third of his government was made up of women. Female participation in politics was another issue where he was considered to have answered poorly in last week's debate.

''I want to appeal to Italians not to throw away our work,'' he said. ''We have done a lot and a lot remains to be done to modernise the country. We ask to be allowed to carry on.'' The prime minister has had a strained relationship with Confindustria, Italy's influential employers' association, since it strongly backed him when he stormed to power in 2001.

Its leaders have criticised Italy's economic decline and in a speech to the conference on Saturday, the association's chairman said it was ready to work with the future government to revive the economy regardless of its political colours.

REUTERS SY KP2213