Berlusconi's wife: Divide Italy

ROME, April 26 (UPI) -- Veronica Lario, wife of Silvio Berlusconi, the former and future Italian prime minister, recommends partitioning the country.

"Italy has never been well-suited to being a single country, and has never matured enough to become one," she told the newspaper La Stampa. "There is no longer any value in a unified Italy."

Italy became a single country in 1870. Since the recent parliamentary elections, Umberto Bossi, leader of the secessionist Northern League has accused politicians in Rome of robbing the industrial north to send aid to southern Italy, and called for splitting the country, The Telegraph reported.

In the La Stampa interview, Lario said many Italians are "snobbish" about the Northern League.

"This is a disillusioned country, even after Berlusconi's victory," she said. "The League expresses concrete demands from the most productive part of Italy, which is tired of dragging the rest of the country and does not find itself represented by the left-wing."

Berlusconi, 71 -- a media mogul who served two terms as prime minister before losing a re-election bid to Romano Prodi in 2006 -- is returning to office after defeating center-left challenger Walter Veltroni in an election this month. Berlusconi is expected to include Bossi in his cabinet.