Two ailing Canadian peacekeepers, who served in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf, tried unsuccessfully almost two years ago to warn the government that depleted uranium may have made them sick.

The two corporals offered their concerns about the radioactive substance in November 1999, during testimony before a special Canadian Forces inquiry into whether peacekeepers sent to Croatia six years earlier might have been exposed to environmental toxins.

That special military inquiry, headed by Col. Joe Sharpe, was unable to conclude what was making the soldiers sick, only that the government should do more to help them. The concerns about depleted uranium, known as DU, never warranted a specific mention in Col. Sharpe's final report.

The Canadian government has consistently played down health risks to its troops in the two weeks since controversy erupted in Europe over the health effects of radiation from ammunition containing depleted uranium. It has been suggested that such shells used in Kosovo and elsewhere in the Balkans have caused the unexplained cancer deaths of more than a dozen NATO peacekeepers.

However, the evidence of the two retired corporals shows the Canadian government has received a more alarming version of the threat posed by depleted uranium than the current line coming from the Defence Department.

"I was not aware until much later that uranium weapons had been used. If I had known then what I know now, I would have been very concerned," retired corporal G.A. Williams testified before the Sharpe inquiry. Cpl. Williams was recalling his 1992 tour of duty in Kuwait, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, where he helped install sewage pipes on a bombed-out landscape.

"I guess the one thing, like I said earlier in the testimony, that I had a concern about was the depleted uranium," testified retired corporal Mike Innes. "I think it is an issue to be looked at."

A welder by trade, Cpl. Innes was sent to the Persian Gulf after the 1991 bombing to help clean up the wreckage from the air campaign, and he was posted to Croatia in 1994.

After their deployments, neither man said they were tested for exposure to uranium. And both testified about the variety of debilitating ailments from which they have suffered ever since.

Since the uproar in Europe, Forces doctors and Defence Minister Art Eggleton say they are satisfied no health risk exists because testing found no evidence of a problem.

The military tested 104 troops sent to both the Persian Gulf and the Balkans, where uranium ammunition was used. This week, NATO's senior medical advisory panel dismissed the concerns for lack of evidence, saying no "Balkan Syndrome" is making its soldiers sick.

That did not ease the growing furore in Europe. Yesterday, Italy's president said NATO must do more to prove categorically there is no health hazard associated with the weapons.

Depleted uranium, 1.7 times more dense than lead, has become a preferred substance in the tip of anti-tank ammunition. NATO fired about 40,000 uranium rounds in the Balkans and Kosovo during its 1994-95 and 1999 bombing campaigns. During the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. bombers fired an estimated 5,000 depleted uranium missiles. Some doctors have warned that radioactive dust from exploded ordnance or their destroyed targets can be harmful to humans.

Cpl. Williams recalled in his testimony how his health immediately began to decline after his arrival in Kuwait City on Feb. 9, 1992, as part of a military cleanup crew.

"My whole body is shot. I feel like I'm deteriorating from the inside out. As you can see, there is a lot of skin disorders from my face and it works its way down," he said. "A lot of headaches, a lot of aches and pains ... I'm very tired."

Although the last of the Kuwaiti oil field fires had been extinguished, "there was something different about the air. You could almost taste it."

Cpl. Williams's job was to help rebuild bombed-out sewage systems, something that brought him into constant contact with various forms of wreckage.

He recalled taking dozens of painkillers to ease his clogged sinuses. He also suffered from diarrhea and nosebleeds. After he left Kuwait, his wife noticed suspicious lesions on his body and demanded he seek an examination. It was later that he learned about the use of depleted uranium, which was when he became more concerned.

Cpl. Innes recalled how he has suffered from chronic fatigue, rashes, eye and joint pain since returning from Croatia in 1994 and a cleanup mission similar to Cpl. Williams's after the Gulf War in 1991. Cpl. Innes, a welder, joined a unit of British engineers whose main job was dismantling and helping remove bombed vehicles from Kuwaiti highways.

"I would say the Gulf actually opened my eyes," Cpl. Innes, now 40, testified in 1999. "The issue was raised once or twice amongst guys that were peers or bosses because of depleted uranium. I didn't make it a habit to go prowling over vehicles over anything over there, you know. But whatever had to be done had to be done. I mean, we did it."

Cpl. Innes came into contact with more bombed-out vehicles during his 1994 posting to Croatia. "Some of the guys were expressing concerns that they didn't want to do it because they thought there could be a possibility of DU contamination," he testified. "I just did my job. ... I figured if there was a concern, somebody would have come forward in my trade."

After his tour of duty in Croatia, Cpl. Innes -- who used to run 15 kilometres a day -- became a shell of the man he used to be, battling chronic illnesses that doctors could not diagnose.

"In retrospect, I have kind of thought back and OK, is DU an issue here because I have been working with those vehicles or in that area or whatever?" he testified.

Cpl. Innes said he considered getting a test, but as of his testimony on Nov. 10, 1999, he had yet to do so.