There are indications that the government may have put on the back burner plans to build a bridge to unite Sicily to the Italian mainland.
Speaking on Tuesday, Public Works Undersecretary Roberto Castelli said that while he had nothing against building a bridge across the Messina Strait, this could only take place after the completion of Corridor Five, the rail link between Ukraine and Portugal which runs through northern Italy.
Castelli, a leading member of the Northern League who is responsible for infrastructures in Italy's center-right government, said at the weekend that he had nothing against Sicily and Calabria building the bridge, ''but it must be clear that resources for the bridge must not be subtracted from those for infrastructures in the north''.
He reiterated this concept on Tuesday and added that the bridge ''will unite Sicily and Calabria, whereas Corridor Five will unite Portugal to Ukraine, Russia, China and then the Pacific. I do not believe there can be any comparison between the two projects''.
Corridor Five, he added, ''is a strategic project for centuries to come''.
The Messina bridge project was a key campaign promise from Premier Silvio Berlusconi this spring and is believed to have played an important role in winning votes for the center right in the south in the mid-April election.
The project was originally presented by Berlusconi's 2001-2006 government but was shelved during the two-year center-left government headed by Romano Prodi.
Last month, after the government took power, the head of Italy's road-building agency ANAS said plans to build the world's longest suspension bridge to link Sicily and the mainland were ''back on track'' and the bridge could open as early as 2016.
The Messina bridge has been hailed as a huge job-creation scheme that would give Italy's image a major boost while bringing Sicily closer to the mainland in both physical and social terms.
But it has been opposed by environmentalists and dogged by concerns over its safety and fears of potential Mafia involvement.
When and if completed, the bridge would replace slow ferry services between Sicily and the mainland.
The 3,690-metre-long bridge has been designed to be able to handle 4,500 cars an hour and 200 trains a day.
Work on the 6.5-billion-euro structure was originally scheduled to start in late 2006 and end in 2012.
