(ANSA) - ROME, APR 30 - League leader Matteo Salvini said as he presented his new book alongside the rightwing party's newest and most controversial European election candidate, suspended anti-gay General Roberto Vannacci, that he liked having an army general beside him in order to talk about peace.
    Vannacci, whose own book slamming gays and other minorities became a runaway bestseller among conservative Italians, faced flak earlier this week after apparently calling for separate school classes for the disabled.
    Speaking at the presentation of his book at the Temple of Hadrian in Rome, Salvini, who has urged negotiations over the Ukraine war and is a past admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said "I like to have a general to talk about peace: one of the central themes of the next five years in Europe will be war or peace. "Some European leaders talk wretchedly about sending our soldiers to fight outside our borders: never in our name a single Italian, European soldier will go to fight and die outside our borders.
    "And maybe the general, who is a defence expert, will say why".
    Vannacci, a 55-year-old former paratrooper commander, is under disciplinary proceedings ordered by the defence ministry over his book, 'Il Mondo al Contrario' (The World Back To Front), slamming gays, feminists, Jews, blacks and other minorities.
    The book says that gays are not normal, espouses the Great Replacement conspiracy theory about mainly Muslim migrants replacing ethnic Italians, suggests only white people can be real Italians, and lauds stand-your-ground self-defence laws.
    Salvini, who is also deputy premier and transport minister, has called his book Controvento (Against the Wind), with the subtitle The Italy That Does Not Surrender. (ANSA).