PARIS, Jan 10: With the departure of his Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero, considered as too euro-friendly, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi has lost no time in affirming to his european partners that in fact his country is much more pro-European than rumour has it.

Except that according to the current rumour going about Rome, the euro hasn’t been as well accepted in Italy as in the other 15 members of the euro zone for the simple reason that it is literally too hot to handle. For, this rumour has it, a good many of the euro pieces circulating about Italy are ... radioactive.

A situation not all that incredible, and unfeasible, given the current use of recycled precious metals throughout the continent, metals which at times include rare bars of previously radioactive materials.

As recently as Nov 2000, France had to ban wristwatches bearing the Trophy trademark, sold in the Carrefour supermarket chain - the world’s second largest - because the watches had been made with recycled metals that apparently contained Cobalt 60, found often in industrial and medical wastes, and considered dangerous when present in large quantities.

In the words of the man who blew the whistle with regard to the watches, Jean-Francois Lacronique, president of the very official French agency, OPRI (Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants) that carefully keeps watch over the excessive presence of radioactivity in everyday life, “it’s possible that a bar of metal, coming from a nuclear plant, might have contaminated 200 tons of recycled steel.”

But in the case of the Italian euros, Mr Lacronique stresses that after tests undertaken by an OPRI laboratory located in the Paris suburb of Le Vesinet, that the whole matter is nothing less than a hoax, what the French refer to as a _canular._

Mr Lacronique says that he collected euros from several european countries - each country producing its own euros, which bear on the backside an appropriately national symbol - and that after spectroscopic analysis, he can affirm that no one country’s euros are any more radioactive than those of another.

Indeed, he was supported in his conclusion by the european Copper Institute, which has affirmed that the copper contained in the euros of all 15 countries is “all new, having been bought on international markets.”

But then nobody has yet come to the fore to say the same for the other metals used in the coins, that is, zinc, nickel, pewter and notably steel, other rumours having it that this metal, produced largely in ex-Eastern europe and especially Poland - a country that hopes to become part of the euro Zone by 2004 - is largely recycled, and could very well contain steel of radioactive origin.

Not to forget, say critics of OPRI, that it was this very same institute that in the late 1980s attempted to shoot down rumours according to which a cloud of radioactive waste from Chernobyl had made its way over French territory, by affirming that the cloud, if it did exist, had never made its way over the border - from such places as Italy.

As it turned out, the cloud had very well crossed over into France and could perhaps be held responsible for the health problems of many persons that the radioactivity has allegedly since contaminated.