'Root out criminals in politics' says Napolitano

(ANSA) - Rome, December 10 - President Giorgio Napolitano said Wednesday that the State must be uncompromising in its handling of corruption.
    "The will to prevent and strike at criminal infiltrations and corrupt practices in politics and administration must never be put in doubt," he said in comments on a massive ongoing mafia probe in the capital.
    The president went on to denounce what he called "a serious deterioration in politics" which has in turn contributed "in a decisive way to a more general decay in social behaviors, and the widespread loss of values that had been shared and guaranteed for decades in the Italian Republic".