[KDN] AFP More cancers in Bosnian Serb entity but no link with DU: minister

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jan 9 (AFP) - The Bosnian Serb health ministry said Tuesday there had been an increase in the number of cancers registered in the Serb entity, but added there was no evidence to link it with the use of depleted uranium munitions during the Bosnian war.

 "It is a fact that there has been an increase of malignant diseases ... but we have no scientific evidence that radiation is the cause of all this", Republika Srpska Health Minister Zeljko Rodic told Bosnian Serb radio.

 He did not specify the period covered by the increase. Rodic added that his ministry had no information on the effects of depleted uranium and that, although some unofficial research was conducted after NATO bombed areas under Serb control at the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, no proper expert analysis exists.  However Slavica Jovanovic, a doctor from the eastern town of Bratunac -- which received large numbers of refugees from Sarajevo's Serb-dominated Hadzici suburb -- told the radio that the mortality level among "refugees coming from Hadzici is double" compared to that of other identifiable groups.

 She assumed this could be linked to radiations from depleted uranium.

 Some 40 people in Bratunac died of cancer in 1996, and more than 170 in 1997, out of an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 refugees from Hadzici, Jovanovic said.

 In the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, US NATO planes fired munitions tipped with armour-piercing depleted uranium on Bosnian Serb and Serbian targets.

 A number of cancer deaths among soldiers and aid workers who served with NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia has sparked fears of a link between radioactive dust emitted by the munitions and cancer.