(By Paul Virgo) (ANSA) - Rome, May 13 - Joseph Blatter, the head of international soccer's governing body FIFA, on Monday expressed dismay at the racist abuse that led to Sunday's Serie A match between AC Milan and AS Roma being briefly suspended.

The match, which ended 0-0, was stopped for around 90 seconds in the second half after some Roma fans ignored warnings there would be a suspension if they continued to direct monkey chants at Milan's Italy forward Mario Balotelli and Ghanaian midfielder Kevin-Prince Boateng. It was the first time officials had used the power to stop Serie A games due to racism from the stands in Italy after a long series of shameful incidents. "Appalled to read about racist abuse in Serie A last night," Blatter said via his Twitter account, @SeppBlatter.

"Tackling this issue is complex, but we're committed to action, not just words".

It is the second time this year that Italian football has hit the international headlines due to racism.

In January Boateng led Milan players in walking off the field after racist abuse in a friendly match at fourth-tier side Pro Patria.

The Ghanaian was widely praised for standing up to the bigots and was invited to speak at a forum organized in Geneva by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.

But any hopes that the incident would turn out to be a watershed were quickly dashed.

Indeed, Serie A clubs continue to receive fines from Serie A's sporting judge for racist chants by their fans, but these punishments are so frequent they gain little media attention. "People should go to the stadium to see two teams do battle, not this stuff," Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri said after Sunday's match, which leaves his side needing to beat already-relegated Siena next weekend to be sure of finishing third and qualifying for the Champions League preliminaries. "The culture in Italy is backward....tonight we had racism, laser beams flashed in the eyes of players, and an interrupted match".

Like Boateng, Balotelli, who has Ghanaian roots, has frequently been the victim of racist abuse too. Porto were fined 20,000 euros because their fans racially abused him during a Europa League tie in February 2012 when he played for Manchester City.

In 2010 some Italian fans travelled abroad to abuse him in a 1-1 draw with Romania, holding up a banner reading ''No to a multiethnic national team'' during a friendly in Klagenfurt, Austria.

Juventus had to play a game behind closed doors in 2009 after their supporters directed chants of "there's no such thing as a black Italian" at him when he was an Inter Milan player.

He also had bananas thrown at him in a Rome bar before the European Under-21 Championships in June 2009.

"Balotelli was defeated this evening, he gave everything, but he is 22 and subjected more and more to racist chants and that doesn't do him any good," said Allegri, who suggested briefly stopping matches was not enough.

"There's only one solution to racism in stadium and that's suspend the match. "To get rid of this stuff in our stadiums, you have to make big decisions. "It could penalize some people but in the long run it would help us to grow as a nation and become more civilized". Lazio Chairman Claudio Lotito said, however, that abandoning matches for racism would give extreme fans the power to blackmail their clubs. Racism has been a problem in Italian soccer at least since the 1980s, when Milan's Dutch star Ruud Gullit spoke out against it.

Messina's Ivory Coast defender Zoro threatened to halt a Serie A game in Italy in November 2005 after suffering racial abuse from visiting Inter supporters.

A decade earlier, Dutchman Aron Winter, a native of Suriname, was subject to attacks at Lazio involving cries of 'Niggers and Jews Out'.

Anti-Semitism has also been a recurring problem in the top flight.

In 1989 Israel striker Ronnie Rosenthal was unable to play even one game for Udinese because of massive pressure from neo-Fascist circles.

Lazio supporters, who include a neo-Fascist hard core, were linked to a brutal assault on Tottenham supporters, a London club with a Jewish heritage, in a Rome pub in November.