BELGRADE, Dec 4 (AFP) - NATO's use of armor-piercing depleted uranium shells in its 1999 air war on Belgrade has left five areas of Yugoslavia contaminated by radiation, excluding areas in Kosovo, a high-ranking army officer said here Thursday.

The zones include sites near Serbia's southern boundary with Kosovo -- near the towns of Presevo, Bujanovac, and Vranje -- as well as in Montenegro, Serbia's smaller, pro-Western partner in federal Yugoslavia, said Colonel Milan Zaric.

"Measures have been taken to address this issue and some of these areas have been marked, while the Montenegrin government has launched a major decontamination programme on the Lustica peninsula," said Zaric, a member of the Yugoslav army's atomic and chemical warfare department.

Around 100 people living near the suspect zones have undergone health checks but have not shown signs of illness related to uranium exposure, Zaric said, quoted by the Beta news agency.

The announcement came as NATO governments voiced growing concern over possible links between the alliance's use of depleted uranium munitions in Bosnia and Kosovo, and leukemia cases among alliance troops later deployed as peacekeepers in the region. Snezana Milacic, a medical expert specialising in the area, told Beta that studies into the medical consequences of depleted uranium use should focus on areas around the southeastern town of Nis and the southern towns of Leskovac and Bujanovac. So far, studies have not shown higher than normal radiation levels in Belgrade, which was not targetted with depleted uranium warheads, she added. NATO bombed Yugoslavia for three months from March to June 1999, in a bid to force the regime of ousted hardline leader Slobodan Milosevic to end its brutal crackdown on an ethnic Albanian insurgency in Kosovo. Depleted uranium is an extremely dense metal which, when fitted to shells, can pierce heavy armour and penetrate military bunkers.

Zaric said contaminated zones in Kosovo were centred in the west of the UN-run Serbian province, where peacekeeping forces are led by Italian and German contingents of the multinational peacekeeping force KFOR, but also include many Dutch peacekeepers. Italy and the Netherlands have both reported cases of soldiers dying of leukemia after tours of duty in the Balkans, although some of those affected had been stationed in Bosnia.

NATO officials said last month that US aircraft fired more than 10,000 depleted uranium projectiles in Bosnia between 1994 and 1995, and in Kosovo in 1999. But Zaric said NATO had probably used more than 50,000 depleted uranium shells against targets in Yugoslavia.