PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Jan 5 (AFP) - Kosovo's civilian and military authorities were on Friday examining possible long-term health risks from US uranium munitions fired during NATO air campaigns. An Italian minister visited the province to reassure peacekeepers amid fears that if depleted uranium (DU) shells fired by US aircraft had caused cancer in troops it could remain undetected for years.
And the province's UN chief, Bernard Kouchner, was in talks with health experts on whether the radioactive dust from the suspect ammunition could have harmed the local population, his spokeswoman said.
Lieutenant General Carlo Cabigiosu, the commander of Kosovo's KFOR peacekeeping force, told reporters that a link between the use of DU during NATO's Bosnian and Kosovo campaigns and leukemia later suffered by the Alliance's troops had "yet to be determined." But he also said that it was difficult to find evidence because most soldiers "had only been here a few months."
Most cases of cancer linked to possible DU contamination have been with soldiers who have served in Bosnia, where the controversial shells were used three years earlier than in Kosovo, leading experts to fear that more cases may be in the pipeline. Marco Minniti, Italy's under-secretary for defence, met Cabigiosu before visiting the headquarters of his country's contingent in the province in Pec, western Kosovo, to reassure troops. Italy supplies the largest single contingent in Kosovo's multinational peacekeeping force, with 6,859 personnel out of a total 44,000 KFOR troops.
The Pec region was one of the main areas where DU shells were used during NATO's bombardment of Yugoslav targets during the 78-day air war which preceded KFOR's intervention in the breakaway province. Seven Italian military personnel and one Red Cross worker have contracted cancers after serving in the Balkans, and NATO has promised the Italian government it will hold an inquiry into whether the deaths were linked to DU use.
Five Belgians, two Dutch, a Portuguese and a Czech are also reported to have died from leukemia since returning from the region. Four French soldiers have also contracted the disease, and Greece is investigating another possible case.
The DU munitions, in which the heavy metal is used to make bullets denser so they can cut through armour, was fired by US aircraft -- some of them based in Italian airbases -- during the bombing of Bosnia and Kosovo.
Washington has dismissed fears about the possible toxic effects of the metal, which some experts believe could cause cancers if breathed in dust form after a shell has hit its target.
Around 31,000 DU munitions were fired at targets in Kosovo and Serbia-proper during the 1998 air campaign, mainly by the American A-10 Thunderbolt "tankbuster" jet.
Adding to pressure for clarification, a German tabloid reported in its Saturday edition that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has found several bomb craters contaminated with radioactivity in Kosovo.
An interim report by UNEP on uranium-containing munitions in the war-torn Yugoslav territory, dated December 29, said that considerable contamination had been found by a UN verification team last November at eight of 12 sites inspected, the paper said.
Kouchner was to meet officials from the World Health Organisation and Kosovo's public health department Friday to discuss whether the uranium could have damaged civilian health, spokeswoman Susan Manuel said.
"He will discuss the whole issue and ways of studying the population for any possible consequences," she said.
But Manuel emphasised that the UN mission (UNMIK) had no evidence of an increase in rates of leukemia or other cancers in Kosovo since the war.
In Bosnia, where DU was used in NATO's 1995 bombardment of Bosnian Serb positions, the health ministry in the Muslim-Croat part of the country has reported that cancer cases had risen from 152 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 230 people in 2000, but said they had no proven link to DU use.