A deathly silence on Depleted Uranium

By Gavin Bowd
It seemed that the NATO campaign in the Balkans was bearing fruit. Slobodan Milosevic was overthrown by the Yugoslav people, apparantly demonstrating the success of the sanctions policy. Last week, the former president of the Bosnian Serbs, Biljana Plavsic, gave herself up to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. The information she could offer on Karadzic, Mladic and others might add further justification for the West's use of military force. However, the new fears of a "Balkans Syndrome," linking cancer with the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, threatens to add the voice of the United States' European allies to the Gulf War veterans already demanding explanations from the Pentagon.
Of course, the DU panic that has seized Europe's capitals could be dismissed as gruesome hypocrisy. It has taken the deaths from leukaemia of six Italian soldiers, and not those of thousands of enemy soldiers and civilians, for the European members of NATO to question the cleanliness of the wars they have waged in the last decade.
There is, as yet, no proven link between DU and cancer. The proportion of leukaemia victims in the Italian contingent serving in the Balkans corresponds roughly to that of the normal adult population back home.
No scientific inquiry is necessary to prove the deadly nature of the cluster bombs and landmines scattered across Yugoslavia, without mentioning the pollution of the Danube by NATO's destruction of oil refineries. It is also difficult for European governments to accuse the Pentagon of hiding the true dangers posed by DU munitions. It is correct that, after peace was signed in Kosovo, Washington took five weeks to warn its allies of the extent of its use of DU weapons. However, it is impossible to believe that the European leaderships were unaware of the ammunition used by the US's A10 "Tankbuster" aircraft, or the Abrams and Bradley tanks that entered the Serb province. It has been revealed in the past few days that the German and British armed forces were informed of the use and dangers of DU. And if the US military are frequent users of DU, three of their allies -- Britain, France and Portugal -- manufacture what is a cheap and effective material for armour-piercing explosives.
However, the "Balkans Syndrome" demonstrates the arrogance and secrecy of NATO, and of the US in particular. It is NGOs, not to mention civilians, who have been kept in the dark. NATO took more than a year to provide the United Nations Environment Programme with a map of DU hits in Kosovo. During the bombardments, organisations such as the Red Cross were also uninformed. If official statements promised to avoid the unecessary loss of civilian life, the latter were utterly unaware of the possible long-term consequences of the weaponry raining down around them.
In light of this, NATO could stand accused of breaching article 3 of the 1980 Geneva Convention, which outlaws weapons that produce excessive traumatic effects and strike indiscriminately.
The Gulf War has shown that the Pentagon and transparency are not synonymous. Since 1991, the medical files of thousands of GIs have been mysteriously lost in transit, while tests for radioactivity in Kuwait have judiciously missed the most devastated areas. The possible links between DU and cancer are a diversion from the main danger posed by the chemical toxicity of DU, notably to the liver and other internal organs. There is, also, a strong suspicion that it was enriched and not "depleted" uranium which reinforced some of NATO's weapons.
In all the conflicts since the Gulf War, it has been the US which has exclusively made use of DU. In this, it confirms its taste for the unilateral use of force. Having tired of seeking the approval of the UN, the US has used NATO as a thin veil for its foreign operations. The operation "Allied Force" served to persuade European NATO members of the US's indispensability. At last week's summit in Brussels, the US -- with its faithful ally, Britain -- dismissed German and Italian demands for a moratorium on DU.
At the same time, however, reports of a rise in radioactivity in Greece and Italy, the two countries most reluctant to wage war over Kosovo, could further drive a wedge between the US and some of its European allies. The moratorium demands by the Green Group in the European Parliament carry weight.
Could the European Union finally part company with the US on defence matters? It is doubtful. The Nice summit gave its blessing to a European rapid reaction force but, under British pressure, recognised the US's leading role. That Britain's former defence secretary, Lord Robertson, is now NATO general-secretary, and that the latter's Spanish predecessor, Javier Solana, is now secretary-general of the Council of the EU, shows that Washington still has powerful allies on the continent.
And yet, the Gulf and Balkan syndromes have demonstrated the absurdity of the idea of a "zero-casualty" war. The growing body-count in years to come may mean that it is American isolationism, and not European indignation, that undoes the Atlantic alliance.
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