Campaign Rife With Obscenities Draws to Abusive Close in Italy

ROME, April 7 -- With simultaneous rallies in Rome and Naples, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and opposition leader Romano Prodi wrapped up one of the most acrimonious electoral campaigns in Italian history on Friday.

Insults and earthy outbursts, especially by Berlusconi and members of his coalition, were common during the eight-week contest. The voting that begins Sunday will be a rematch; Prodi, who has led in the most recent polls, defeated Berlusconi in 1996.

The prime minister is a media magnate with a flair for the public stage and speaking his mind. He is running on a platform of anti-communism and tax cuts.

Prodi, a former economics professor with a low-key style, has countered with a promise of "serious government," an allusion to the many gaffes of Berlusconi's five years in office and the abiding stagnation of the Italian economy.

The prime minister is one of President Bush's staunchest allies and has sent 3,000 troops to Iraq. The deployment was unpopular, but Berlusconi blunted criticism by pledging to bring the troops home by the end of 2006. Iraq has been largely a non-issue in the campaign.

Prodi says he will pull Italian troops out of Iraq "as soon as possible."

Once a fresh face in Italian politics, Berlusconi, 69, has undergone a makeover in office, with the help of plastic surgery, a hair transplant and high heels. Italy's richest man, he depicts himself as the victim of a conspiracy by communists, journalists, businessmen, bankers and the judiciary.

On Thursday, he called for U.N. election monitors to come to Italy. "With all the newspapers, with television stations behaving the way you've seen," he said, "you bet they should come to defend us from these men who are experts at rigging."

The Berlusconi family's Mediaset conglomerate owns the country's three major private television networks, and, as the head of the government, Berlusconi indirectly influences the three public stations.

This week, he caused an uproar by using a vulgar word to describe supporters of Prodi's Union coalition, which comprises nine parties, including a Roman Catholic group, socialists, environmentalists and communists.

"I have too much esteem for the intelligence of Italians to think that there are so many coglioni who would vote against their own interests," the prime minister told a shopkeepers' union, employing a slang word for male genitalia.

Some of Berlusconi's allies in his coalition, the House of Liberties, have delivered similar insults. Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the World War II dictator Benito Mussolini and the leader of a neo-fascist party, used a pejorative term last month to refer to a transgender communist candidate.