Leon Panetta, named by the US President-elect Barack Obama to head the CIA, speaks Calabrian dialect, according to his cousin.

Mr Panetta, 70, is the American-born son of Italian immigrants from Calabria. His father Carmelo worked in a copper mine in Wyoming before moving to Monterey in California, where he set up a restaurant.

Domenico Panetta, former mayor of Siderno in Calabria, said that when his cousin Leon rose to be chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, "I went to see him at the White House and we understood each other perfectly both in our local dialect and in Italian - but not so much in English, which I don't speak too well".

He added: ''Leon is very attached culturally to our home town. He told me he missed it dearly and wanted to visit again the place his family came from. But he has always been too busy to do so. Maybe in his new job he'll be able to come to Europe and to Italy and even visit us in Calabria. That would be really nice".

Mr Panetta was elected to Congress, serving in the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993 before becoming Mr Clinton's chief of staff in 1994, a post he held for three years. His cousin said he was not surprised that Mr Obama had chosen him to be CIA director.

''Because of his political, cultural and human qualities I knew he would get a top-ranking appointment," Mr Panetta said.

Calabria is home to the 'Ndrangheta, a Mafia network said by Italian police to be even more powerful and wealthy than Cosa Nostra in Sicily thanks to its control of drugs trafficking.

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