Protests as Monti unveils response to crisis

The clashes came as premier Mario Monti prepared to unveil his anti-crisis strategy ahead of a confidence vote in his day-old government.

Police in riot gear scuffled with students in Milan, where they planned to march to Bocconi University, which educates Italy’s business elite. Mr Monti, an economist and former European Union competition commissioner, is Bocconi’s president.

He formed his government on Wednesday, shunning politicians and turning to fellow professors, bankers and other business figures to fill key cabinet posts. “The government of the banks,” read one placard held by a youth marching in the protest in Milan.

In Palermo, Sicily, demonstrators hurled eggs and smoke bombs at a bank, and protesters threw rocks at police who responded with pepper spray.

In the capital Rome, hundreds of students gathered outside Sapienza University, while others assembled near the main train station.

They planned to march to the Senate, where Mr Monti was scheduled to speak ahead of a confidence vote.

Meanwhile, police officers guarding Greece’s parliament fired tear gas and stun grenades yesterday to disperse rioting youths, as thousands marched through Athens to the US embassy in an annual protest.

Dozens of masked youths broke out of the 7,000-strong crowd to throw petrol bombs at riot police, who responded with tear gas.

With Greece heading for its fourth year of recession and saddled with record unemployment, the march was the first test of public sentiment for the new coalition government of Lucas Papademos.

The annual protest commemorates the 1973 bloody quashing of a student uprising by the US-backed military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.