TIME EUROPE
January 22, 2000, Vol. 157 No. 3
Balkan Dust Storm
As leukemia kills troops, Europe and NATO confront a mystery dating back to the Gulf War. Is depleted uranium to blame?
By MARYANN BIRD London
It sounds so eerily familiar. young men in the prime of their lives return from the war zone and fall ill with an assortment of ailments. First a tiny handful, then dozens are diagnosed with leukemia, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, skin cancer and other tumors. Still more complain of intense fatigue, muscle pain, shortness of breath, rashes, chronic infections, sudden hair loss and other physical and psychological problems. Some die. Fear grips families. Politicians and defense chiefs express concern, squabble, float theories, point fingers or issue denials. Everyone demands an explanation. Nobody has a definitive one, especially not the scientists.
In what appears to be a mushrooming European version of the controversy over the host of debilitating, often fatal, illnesses that afflicted tens of thousands of soldiers and Iraqi civilians after the 1991 Gulf War, troops who served in the Balkans are being stricken by an array of illnesses. Suspicion and speculation about the cause of the problems — loosely labeled "Balkans syndrome" — have fallen on munitions containing depleted uranium. A toxic and slightly radioactive by-product of the nuclear fuel-processing chain, DU is the key component of the tank-busting shells used in NATO's 1999 campaign to drive Serbian forces from Kosovo. It was also deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1994-95, where anecdotal evidence of a leap in cancers is spreading.
But unlike the U.S. and Britain when the Gulf War cases first started to ring alarm bells, Europe's governments opted not to stonewall. In a remarkable flurry of activity, they drummed up support from the European Union's Swedish presidency and its executive Commission, stepped up health screening of Balkans veterans in several countries, sent investigators to the region and extracted a NATO pledge to provide all relevant information at the alliance's disposal to the numerous national and international inquiries now under way. Said Secretary-General George Robertson: "We have nothing to hide and everything to share."
The first thing shared was the widespread insistence by military officials and scientists alike that there is simply no evidence to link depleted uranium to the 60-some medical cases, including 20 deaths, being investigated. Half of the cases — and a third of the deaths — are Italian. Italy, along with Germany, Norway, Portugal and Greece, pleaded in vain at a meeting of NATO ambassadors last week for a moratorium on DU weapons. Most of the 19 member-nations agreed with the U.S., Britain and France — the three NATO allies that used DU munitions in the Balkans — that there was no scientific ground for sidelining the weapon. Calling concern over DU "more than legitimate," Prime Minister Giuliano Amato conceded the situation is "delicate."
Delicate, indeed. The debate comes at a time of particular sensitivity within NATO over transatlantic security issues. As the Bush administration prepares to take the reins in Washington, battles with Europe are brewing — over a U.S. missile defense system, the growing aspirations of the E.U. on political control of NATO military actions, a rethink of Balkan peacekeeping commitments and expansion of the alliance itself.
The latest controversy exploded this month after newspapers in Italy reported that the country's military prosecutor was investigating medical cases that could be linked to the DU shells. Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium soon waded in, reporting a spate of suspicious cancers among their own former peacekeepers. After denying flatly that any of its troops had contracted leukemia, France acknowledged four cases, then six. Others were reported by Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece and Hungary.
While no questionable illnesses have yet been officially reported in Yugoslavia and its former republics, nerves are jangling, particularly among villagers living near contaminated sites. According to data NATO supplied to the U.N. Environment Program, DU ammunition was used in air attacks on Serbian targets at 112 locations in Kosovo and 10 sites in Serbia proper. Last week, as Bosnia set up a panel to coordinate data on DU effects, the Yugoslav government formed one to monitor the situation in Serbia and Montenegro.
"Everything is under control," says Colonel Dragan Velickovic, a Yugoslav army spokesman. "All con-taminated sites are clearly marked and the removal of debris is under way. So far, we have no reports of leukemia among our soldiers." And though it doesn't like to boast about it, the Yugoslav army also has DU ammunition in its arsenal. An officer with the army's procurement agency says Belgrade has been importing armor-piercing DU shells from Russia for at least 20 years. "We never used them in Kosovo because we never made contact with the enemy tanks," the officer said, "but we used them a lot in Bosnia — and on the training grounds, of course." He too believes the shells are "totally harmless — unless you're standing right in their path."
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As leukemia kills troops, Europe and NATO confront a mystery dating back to the Gulf War. Is depleted uranium to blame?
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