(ANSA) - Palermo, June 9 - Jailed Mafia boss Giuseppe Graviano described ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi as a traitor in a bugged conversation with a fellow inmate, the transcript of which has been included in evidence for the trial into alleged negotiations between the State and the Mafia in the early 1990s.

"When Berlusconi started in the 1970s he started on the right foot, throw in some luck and he ended up what he is," Graviano said. "When he found himself with a such a (big) party in 1994, he got drunk and said 'I can't share what I have with those who helped me'. He distanced himself and was a traitor".

Graviano, who said he had got his wife pregnant in jail despite being under a supposedly tough regime, was taped as he talked to a cellmate during an hour in the open air at Ascoli Piceno jail.

"Berlusconi asked me for this favour...that's why there was the urgency," he said.

"He wanted to come down...but in that period there were the old guys and he told me it would take a beautiful thing". He also said he been "abandoned" by Berlusconi and he would retaliate by "making Mr Cuckold spend a bad old age". He went on: "he knows that I won't talk, because he knows my character and my abilities...dirty cuckold, you're nothing else, but just tell them how you are in government, that you did shameful and unjust things....

"You know that I've done 24 years, my family is destroyed..you're giving whores money every month. "I waited for you up till now...and you are letting me die in jail without me having done anything. "I brought you prosperity, 24 years ago they arrest me and you start stabbing me (in the back)".

Bombings that killed 20 at art and religious sites in Rome, Florence and Milan in spring and summer 1993 were not the work of the Sicilian Mafia, Graviano said.

Referring to the Mafia's 1992 killings of anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, he said "then there were other massacres in '93 but that wasn't the mafia, they say it was the mafia". He pointed out that the government had eased the tough 41-bis jail regime and then, in November '93, eased conditions for 450 bosses. Prosecutors allege that Cosa Nostra set ending the 41-bis prison regime as a condition for ending its bombing campaign. Graviano recalls his spell under the 41-bis on the prison island of Pianosa and says "you had to go out even if you were dying, you had to go between them, and run. They threw soap and water at you". He went on "they were totally easing the 41 bis...unless things happened, they didn't touch you, in '93 things suddenly improved".

The taped conversations have been set to prosecutors in Caltanissetta, where investigations into the Falcone and Borsellino killings are based, and to Florence, where probes into the 1993 bombings in Rome. Florence and Milan are based.

