Di Maio urges US-style security strategy

(ANSA) - Rome, March 22 - Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio on Friday called for the government to adopt a US-style national security strategy, prompting his government partner and other Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini to demur and say he would "hold dear the Italian system".
    Di Maio said that "we need to start moving on prevention, and not only repression.
    "Italy needs to start giving itself a National Security Strategy on the US model.
    He said Defence Minister Elisabetta Trenta was "already working on it, guided by the premier's office.
    "We must proceed in an interconnected way between the defence ministry, the interior ministry, the transport and infrastructure ministry and other ministries, with the premier's office and with the coordination of the security intelligence department (DIs)." Salvini reacted by saying "when I hear talk of an American model, I say that I hold dear the Italian model of security: the work of our intelligence services and of our security forces can give lessons to all.
    "Then, of course, you never stop learning".
    Salvini said he did not feel he had been "told off" by Di Maio.
    Hew said there had been "great" results on the mafia, drugs, rackets and human trafficking.
    The interior ministry issued a statement saying "the Italian system works, as shown by the police response to a bus hijack terror ordeal on Wednesday.
    Trenta said "Salvini says our (intelligence services) are the best in the world? But of course, we also think our intelligence apparatus, our soldiers and our police forces are the best in the world.
    "But be careful about taking their merits, because it is a thing on which politics has often slipped up.
    "Politics gives a vision".
    Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said his ministry was working with the interior and defence ministries and the government "is working in synergy on the National Security Strategy model".
    Toninelli stressed the importance of protecting strategic infrastructures from "fresh threats"