Italians protest over U.S. base expansion

By Lisa Jucca

VICENZA, Italy (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Italians under heavy police guard marched through the city of Vicenza on Saturday to protest at the expansion of a U.S. military base that has divided the center-left government.

Leftists who last year voted for Prime Minister Romano Prodi, an Iraq war opponent, turned out in droves to decry his approval for U.S. plans to expand the base in Vicenza, home of the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

Pacifists waved rainbow-striped peace banners while some protesters carried anti-American slogans like "Yankees go Home" as they marched through the city and gathered in a main square.

"There is no reason to have this base here," said Antonio Faitta, a 25-year-old gardener who traveled from Genoa.

The Pentagon wants a larger base so that it can house the entire brigade instead of dividing it between Italy and Germany.

Prodi appealed to demonstrators to refrain from violence, following warnings from the interior minister that the protest could draw people "hostile to the forces of law and order".

The U.S. embassy had warned Americans to steer clear of the small northern Italian city of 115,000, where officials also shut schools normally open on Saturday as a precaution.

But the protests were peaceful. Police estimates pegged the crowd at more than 70,000 people, a turnout that Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, of the Greens Party, said was a resounding "referendum against doubling the U.S. base".