A controversial census of Italy's gypsy camps will continue, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said Wednesday.
Maroni said the survey of Roma adults and children, which includes fingerprinting, had not been ''superseded'' by parliament's decision to require fingerprints on all Italian ID cards from January 2010.
The minister rejected a call from Democratic Party leader Walter Veltroni to scrap the census because of the changed ID card rules.
He said he was ready to sue anyone who accused him of being racist.
Maroni will meet Thursday in Rome with Romanian Interior Minister Cristian David to discuss Italy's camp census programme.
On Wednesday Romanian President Calin Popescu Tariceanu said Romania could not accept ''discriminatory practices which do not respect human dignity''.
Italy's census of its 140,000 Roma has been criticised by human rights groups and the European parliament.
More than half of the gypsies in the camps are minors.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday told European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso one of the main aims of the plan was to get Roma children into schools.
On Thursday Maroni accused Veltroni, a former Rome mayor, of having done little during his two terms to improve the prospects of Roma children.
''The Left has a guilty conscience because the indecency of the Roma camps was tolerated, in Rome and elsewhere,'' he claimed.
''There are 7,000 (Roma) minors in Rome alone and only 1,000 of them attend school''.
Barroso said Tuesday he was ''confident'' that Italy would satisfy the European Union its camp survey abides by EU rules.
Italy has been asked to supply details of its camp census by the end of July.
Maroni said Rome would report back to Brussels once the census is completed in October.
