Rome, January 10 (Tanjug) - A profitable business with nuclear waste involving US and British firms may be one of the reasons why Washington and London rejected Italian initiative for granting the moratorium on the use of missiles tipped with depleted uranium, the Italian daily Il Manifesto says today.

The daily says that depleted uranium tipped into the shells fired on the territory of Bosnia and Kosovo was produced by an American company closely cooperating with the British Nuclear Fuel Company (BNFL) owned by the British Government.

This company was neither privatized by the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, nor the current one Tony Blaire, Il Manifesto says, adding that together with political and military motives, the main reason for the US-British refusal of the Italian initiative for granting the moratorium was "US- British economic empire based on the use of depleted uranium."

British company BNFL is engaged in nuclear waste and its recycling. According to Il Manifesto, it is so successful that it even uses German, Japanese and French nuclear waste and so powerful that its ships and trains with lethal cargo cannot be stopped neither by the Greenpeace, nor by the members of other world ecological organizations.

According to Il Manifesto, the BNFL administrative board comprised and still does VIPs of the British establishment such as Chris Lounglin, president of the World Institute for Nuclear Transport, Ser Nigel Vicks, former president of the EU monetary committee and the private secretary of first labour Prime Ministers Wilson and Callaghan. The BNFL directly cooperates with several US companies, among which is Starmet Corporation, the last link in the chain of production of missiles tipped with depleted uranium. Is there anything better than getting rid of the nuclear waste by throwing it on the enemy? - Il Manifesto asks.