ROME (AP) - An Italian panel has reached the same conclusion as European Union experts: there is no proven link between depleted uranium and cancer in soldiers.

The Italians, however, on Monday recommended the continued monitoring of soldiers' health.

The incidence of cancers in soldiers who served in Bosnia and Kosovo was lower than the normal incidence of such tumors in the overall population, said Franco Mandelli, head of the investigative panel commissioned by the Defense Ministry.

Earlier this month, EU experts concluded that depleted uranium used in armor-piercing weapons had no link to health problems, findings that concurred with NATO's own studies.

U.S. aircraft used munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly radioactive heavy metal, during the 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, as well as in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995.

Concerns arose in several European countries this year when Italy began studying the illnesses of veterans of Balkans peacekeeping missions.

The Italian commission studied 28 cases of cancer from late 1995 through January 2001 in 39,450 Italian soldiers. Ten of those cases ended in death. Comparing the incidence of cancer in Italian soldiers to Italians in general, the panel found that the number of cases in soldiers was "significantly lower than the expected" number, the commission said.

Mandelli did note that the rate of Hodgkin's disease was higher than expected - nine instead of four cases - as well as that of acute lymphatic leukemia - two instead of the expected incidence of one.

But he said those findings were "not statistically significant," given the overall number of cancers and the size of the population studied.

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