YUGOSLAVIA: Ecologists in Spain Protest Radioactive Weapons

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Apr 9 1999 (IPS) - A Spanish umbrella group of environmentalist organisations protested Friday the use of radioactive weapons in the war in Yugoslavia.

‘Ecologistas en Acciones’ (Ecologists in Actions – EEA), which groups around 100 non-governmental organisations, urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to demand that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) refrain from using weapons with radioactive components.

The call coincided with a warning issued in Moscow by Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov against NATO’s use of radioactive weapons.

In its communique, EEA stated that NATO was using U.S. A-10 “Wart Hog” fighter planes, armed with anti-tank guns that shoot missiles with radioactive spearheads.

Spent uranium obtained in the manufacturing of atomic bombs is used in the anti-tank missiles, which are capable of breaking through the thick armour of tanks, as the uranium in the spearheads is denser than any other metal.

The EEA warned that when the missiles explode, they pollute the surrounding area with radioactivity, which could cause catastrophic health problems and environmental damage far into the future in the areas now being bombed.

The environmentalists pointed out that the same anti-tank missiles were used in the 1991 Gulf War, and that a number of veterans of that conflict were now suffering from diseases traced to radioactivity.

The EEA described the use of such weapons in Kosovo as “cynical…because the pollution will also affect the Kosovar population, which is supposedly being protected. And the contamination will endure in the areas to which the refugees will want to return.”

Another risk to civilians is the use of expanding bombs, which Britain’s defence ministry confirmed were being dropped by British planes.

Shortly after being dropped, each one of the 300-kg bombs breaks up into a mass of small fist-sized explosives. Besides the high mortality caused by such bombs, a number of the small explosives fail, and remain on the ground, where they explode when stepped on or driven over.

According to the Madrid daily ‘El Pais’, the use of expanding bombs is essentially an alternative method for planting landmines, which provides similar results without the controversy that led to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and the signing of the International Mine Ban Treaty.

“NATO is prisoner of a diabolical logic that has led to conduct which far from resolving the Kosovo problem, is aggravating it,” wrote the EEA.

The use of radioactive missiles, the group added, confirmed that “the ethnic cleansing undertaken by genocidal (Yugoslavian President Slobodan) Milosevic has been aggravated since the bombing began.”

A broad coalition of NGOs, including those grouped in the EEA, have called a mass demonstration for noon Sunday at the ‘Puerta del Sol’ in Madrid “to protest the ethnic cleansing by the genocidal government of Milosevic and the NATO military intervention, and demand recognition of the Kosovar people’s right to self-determination.”