Disruptions at rally in Turin

TURIN (Reuter) - Riot police move in to control left-wing militants who disrupted a rally called yesterday by mainstream trade unions. The rally was organised as a protest against planned government spending cuts designed to reduce the budget deficit and establish credibility for re-entry of the lira into the exchange-rate mechanism. Police rushed to break up a group of demonstrators who had been pelting union leaders with coins, bolts and rotten vegetables. It was the fourth such attack in as many days on labour leaders in Florence, Milan and Genoa. Shortly after the Turin violence, the leader of Italy's largest labour grouping, Bruno Trenin, said a general strike was inevitable unless the government changed the package of austerity measures, including new taxes and cuts in health care, that it unveiled last week.

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