More disturbing hints that the leftist-Islamist coalition is planning something big: Bomb Found in Town After Blair Visit.

ROME - Police defused a time-bomb in a town near Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s villa on the island of Sardinia on Wednesday shortly after British Prime Minister Tony Blair finished a visit there with the Italian leader.

Police official Giovanni Lopresto, speaking by telephone from the Sardinian city of Olbia, said the device containing dynamite and a timer was found near a trash can in Porto Rotondo, a few miles from the villa.

It was discovered after a tip-off from a radical leftist group, and authorities said they did not believe the device was directed at Blair, who left Sardinia several hours before it was set to go off. The explosive had a potential deadly range of about 11 yards, they said.

A caller claiming to be from an extremist group called the Proletarian Groups for Communism phoned in a warning to the island’s Unione Sarda newspaper late Tuesday, saying the organization had planted two bombs, said Patrizia Mozzi, a journalist from the paper.

Mozzi said the caller gave the location of only one device, and the caller added: “We promised a summer of fire and this is the response to Berlusconi. War against war” — an apparent reference to Italy’s role in the Iraq conflict, which leftist groups here fiercely opposed.