Bomb found near Berlusconi villa

The Blairs left Sardinia on Tuesday after visiting Silvio Berlusconi

Italian police have defused a bomb near Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Sardinian holiday villa, hours after a visit by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Police have denied local reports that a second device was also found in the Porto Rotundo area after a newspaper received the bomb warning.

Italian news agency Ansa said the caller claimed to be from the leftist Proletarian Combatant Groups (NPC).

Mr Blair and his wife Cherie left Sardinia on Tuesday after a short stay.

Italy has been on heightened security alert after a general terror threat from a group linked to al-Qaeda.

The group had threatened to attack Italy if it failed to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

But this bomb was said to have been left by an Italian anarchist organisation which the national Corriere della Sera newspaper says has carried out 20 attacks in the last four years, including small bombings of government party headquarters in Sardinia.

Embarrassment

The paper said the caller gave details of where the first bomb was planted, but would not reveal the location of the other, saying: "We're not telling you, go and find it. It's for Berlusconi."

But police say only one device, containing dynamite, was discovered. That was found in a rubbish bin a few kilometres from the villa and was defused by bomb experts.

Police said the device timed to go off at 0230 GMT had the potential to have killed anyone within a radius of about 10 metres.

The BBC's Guto Harri, in Rome, says the timing and the warning suggest that the group never intended to harm Mr Berlusconi or his high-profile guest.

He says its aim, it seems was to cause embarrassment to Mr Berlusconi given that such a device could be planted when security was meant to be extremely tight.