ROME -- Italy, where at least six soldiers have died of cancer since serving in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, is demanding that NATO explain its use of armor-piercing ammunition containing depleted uranium.

Italy's Green and Communist parties, both opponents of NATO's 78-day bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, have long claimed that the ammunition was sickening peacekeepers in the Balkans.

Last week, Italy announced it was investigating illnesses among soldiers deployed in Kosovo after airstrikes there in 1999. Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Finland followed suit by screening their Balkans veterans.

NATO scheduled top-level discussions on the ammunition Saturday, the Italian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

"The issue has taken a serious turn and the alarm caused is more than legitimate," Italian Premier Giuliano Amato said in an interview published Wednesday in La Repubblica newspaper.

Depleted uranium, a dense metal with low levels of radioactivity, is used in artillery because of its ability to penetrate armor. But some believe the dust created upon impact may be harmful.

The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia, SFOR, acknowledged using depleted uranium ammunition in Bosnia in the fall of 1994 and in the fall of 1995. But SFOR rejected the theory that depleted uranium was making soldiers ill.

In Kosovo, U.S. warplanes used armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium mostly in the central, western and southwestern parts of the province - areas where Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese peacekeepers later were deployed.

A U.N. team that went to Kosovo in November is doing a study and is expected to report its findings in February.

Amato suggested he did not believe NATO's assurances. "Now we fear things may not be so simple," he said of the possible health risk.

He said Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini would press NATO to "assume its responsibility." Amato also seemed to suggest that Italy was deceived about the use of depleted uranium ammunition in an earlier Balkan conflict, the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

NATO member Italy takes part in every military meeting and is entitled to whatever information it is seeking, a NATO spokesman said in Brussels, Belgium.

Italy's study will concentrate on the illnesses of 30 Balkans veterans, including the six who have died of cancer. About 60,000 Italian soldiers have served in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia since 1995.

Defense Minister Sergio Matarella leaves Thursday to reassure Italian peacekeepers in Bosnia.

"This is not a subject for politicians or even the military," he told the Corriere della Serra newspaper in an interview published Wednesday. "Science needs to tell us what really happened."

Other European countries were checking their troops as well for radiation.

Portugal and Turkey were screening soldiers in Kosovo, and Spain said it would examine all 32,000 troops who have served in the Balkans since 1992. Initial tests have come back negative, Spain's Defense Ministry said last week.

Portugal's Parliament held an emergency session Wednesday after the father of one deceased Kosovo veteran demanded that his son be exhumed for a radiation exposure test. The head of the army, Gen. Antonio Martins Barrento, dismissed the father's concerns as a "paranoid fantasy."

Finland, which is not a member of NATO but contributed 2,000 soldiers to the peacekeeping force, said spot checks of urine samples from veterans so far have revealed no radiation exposure.

Greece said it was monitoring radiation levels in the parts of Kosovo where it has troops.

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