EUROPE: Latest Victim of NATO’s Radioactive Weapons Reported in Spain

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Jan 5 2001 (IPS) - The number of victims of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) war in the Balkans is still climbing throughout Europe, with the latest victim of the bombing with depleted uranium (DU) reported Friday in Spain.

A 35-year-old Spanish corporal who was posted for several months in the Balkans was diagnosed with leukemia and admitted to a hospital in Salamanca, 200 kms northwest of Madrid.

The Red Cross, meanwhile, announced medical check-ups for all foreign aid workers who had done stints in the Balkan region.

The question will be discussed by NATO at its meeting next Tuesday in Brussels. France and Italy urged the organisation to investigate and clarify the risks posed by the DU hardened warheads that U.S. forces used in Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Yugoslavian province of Kosovo.

In the 1994-95 war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, 10,000 such shells were fired, while 31,000 were used in Kosovo in 1999. In the 1991 Gulf War, meanwhile, more than 900,000 such shells were used by the U.S.-led multinational force against targets in Iraq and Kuwait.

Physicist Francisco Castro, a spokesman for the energy commission of the Spanish non-governmental organisation (NGO) Ecologists in Action, cited a study by the University of Halifax in Canada which predicted the probability of a cancer rate of one per 1,000 people in areas where such weapons were employed.

Another local NGO, the Movement for Peace, Disarmament and Freedom (MPDL), ordered thorough medical studies Friday on the 15 volunteers it had sent to the Balkans, even though none of them showed symptoms of health problems.

The MPDL said the greatest concern should not be focused on the soldiers NATO deployed in the Balkans, but on the civilian population exposed to the bombing.

This week’s case was the second reported in Spain. Last October, a 22-year-old soldier died of cancer, and this week his family announced that it would hold the government responsible for sending him to the Balkan region.

However, the Defence Ministry denied any relation between the two cases, and said DU was not even used in the areas where the two men were posted.

The ministry even denied that the soldier who died of cancer in October had been in the places that were bombed. His family, however, produced photos showing him in Kosovo. A brother of the victim also said the deceased’s girlfriend was being treated for leukemia.

So far similar cases have been reported in Portugal, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Turkey, France, Italy, Belgium and the United States, besides Spain and the cases documented in the areas that were bombed.

The greatest number of casualties was reported in Italy: seven soldiers and one civilian who had been deployed in Kosovo and Bosnia. Two of the soldiers died of rare forms of cancer, while the other five and a member of the Italian Red Cross died of leukemia.

Concern is running so high that the president of the European Union, Italy’s Romano Prodi, interrupted his vacations Thursday to demand an explanation from NATO, and to call for an EU-wide investigation.

“We have the right to know the whole truth about the effects of depleted uranium, not only with respect to the soldiers, but also regarding the impact on civilians,” Prodi told an Italian radio station.

Italian Prime Minister Giulio Amato also demanded detailed information from NATO on exactly what sites were bombed with DU- hardened missiles.

DU, a by-product of the process of enrichment of natural uranium for use in fuel or weapons, is used to harden warheads to strengthen their armour-piercing capacity. It is denser than lead and tungsten, normally the hardest metals used for such purposes.

Meanwhile, the final verdict by five European laboratories commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to study the health and environmental effects of the DU weapons used in Kosovo is not expected until March.

The United Nations announced that deadline when a team of 14 researchers from various countries, headed by Pekka Haavisto, a former minister of the environment and development aid from Finland, carried out an inspection in Kosovo last Nov 5 to 17.

On the request of NGOs, scientists and political leaders from a number of countries, UNEP had carried out an initial inspection in 1999. However, the results were incomplete, because “there was insufficient data available to address the issue of depleted uranium,” according to UNEP director Klaus Toepfer from Germany.

It was not until mid-2000 that NATO provided more precise data on the areas that were bombed, as requested by UN secretary- general Kofi Annan and Toepfer.

The soil, water and vegetation samples as well as smear tests conducted on buildings, destroyed military vehicles and DU penetrators by the mission of 14 experts are being analysed for both radioactivity and toxicity.

The five laboratories carrying out the tests are the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute (SSI) in Stockholm; AC Laboratorium- Spiez in Switzerland; Bristol University’s Department of Earth Sciences in the UK; the International Atomic Energy Agency Laboratories (IAEA) in Seibersdorf, Austria, and the Italian National Environmental Protection Agency (ANPA) in Rome.

UNEP reported that it was discussing with Yugoslavian authorities a similar mission in Serbia and Montenegro, which could be carried out during the first half of this year.

The assessment work on DU has been financed by the Swiss government.

Although according to the scientific mission sent to Kosovo, the final evaluation is pending the results of the laboratory tests, Haasvisto said “the UNEP team believes that its preliminary findings call for precautions to be taken when dealing with penetrators and sabots found at the identified sites and near other locations where such ammunition might be present.”