NATO Will Probe Bosnia's Depleted Uranium Targets
By Andrew Hobbs
Brussels, Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson ordered an investigation of sites in Bosnia attacked by alliance planes using depleted uranium weapons, amid mounting concern in Europe about the long-term health risks to soldiers from such weapons, news reports said.
In a letter to Italy's ambassador to NATO, Robertson said he "fully understands" the country's "deep concern" about such munitions after the deaths of seven Italian peacekeepers from leukemia since their return from Bosnia, Agence France-Presse reported.
"I have asked the NATO military authorities to report as soon as possible on where the targets were attacked with munitions using depleted uranium (in Bosnia) and on the quantity of munitions involved," AFP quoted Robertson as saying.
The deaths of at least 15 veterans from five European countries have been linked to the weapons, and eight countries have started testing the health of soldiers involved in the conflicts. Depleted uranium, a by-product of converting natural uranium for use as fuel, is used in anti-tank munitions because its high density makes it able to pierce armor. ...
About 31,000 depleted uranium shells were fired by US A-10 aircraft during the 1999 bombardment of Serbia and Kosovo. About 1,000 rounds of ammunition containing depleted uranium were fired in the 1994-95 Bosnian conflict, the Financial Times said. That compares with more than 850,000 of the rounds fired during the 1991 Gulf War.
Research has concentrated on the effects of inhaling particles created when the metal turns into a gas after its hits a hard target, the Financial Times said.
Both the U.S. and the U.K. acknowledge that that can be dangerous if it's inhaled, though they say the danger is short-lived, localized and more likely to lead to chemical poisoning than irradiation, the British Broadcasting Corp. said.
U.S. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon rejected an Italian call for a ban on the weapons, telling a news conference in Washington there was no "health reason to consider a moratorium now."
The U.K. defense ministry said it won't test its veterans' health because the links to cancer are unproven.
"It's not an illegal weapon, it's a very effective weapon," the BBC quoted NATO spokesman Mark Laity as saying. "The medical consensus is, it is not a problem."
[Well, "no problemo" is most certainly the *US-UK* consensus, at least.]
Carl
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