Dusseldorf- Five more German municipal incinerators were given regulatory clearance Thursday to burn imported refuse from the southern Italian city of Naples, where uncleared garbage has triggered a political crisis.

German incinerator operators, mostly public-owned, have agreed to destroy 160,000 tons of the trash for an undisclosed price. Hamburg is currently burning 3,000 tons per week after it has been carried north by rail.

The most populous German state, North Rhine Westphalia, is to take 69,500 tons from Campania, the Italian region that includes Naples.

Incinerators at Dusseldorf, Herten, Kamp-Lintfort, Cologne and Weisweiler are to burn the trash under an initial state clearance given Thursday that covers 54,000 tons of that fraction.

State environment ministry officials in Dusseldorf said the first shipments were expected in 10 days at a depot in Leverkusen, an industrial suburb of Cologne, where the containers will be off-loaded before being distributed to the plants.

The incinerators, described by Hamburg official Reinhard Fiedler as 10 per cent furnace and 90 per cent smoke-purification equipment, release only a faint exhaust plume, but contract burning still requires an environmental permit.

The Italian embassy in Berlin officially asked Germany to help solve the crisis, which Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has sworn to solve.

Campania's recurrent failure to build sufficient incinerators of its own has been variously blamed on corruption, underworld interference and protests by residents. The Weisweiler plant burned rubbish from Naples during a previous garbage crisis.

After a recent flap over slightly radioactive iodine 131 from a doctor's surgery, the rubbish is being checked in Italy with Geiger- counters before trains, carrying 500 to 700 tons on each run, haul it through the Alps to Germany. (dpa)