Pentagon, Rand DU Cover-Up As Epidemic Spreads
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Friday, January 5 6:39 AM SGT

Pentagon rejects moratorium on depleted uranium use

WASHINGTON, January 4 (AFP) - The Pentagon rejected Italian calls for a moratorium on the use of radioactive depleted uranium (DU) munitions, saying it had found no link to leukemia or any other health problems among troops who served in the Balkans.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the US military had detected no adverse health effects either among US troops who have served in the Balkans or those who handle DU rounds or work in tanks protected by DU armor.

"We don't see any health reason to consider a moratorium now," he said at a briefing here.

Italy's defense ministry called on NATO to discuss its proposal for a moratorium on the use DU munitions, while acknowledging it had found no direct link between the armor-piercing munitions and the deaths from leukemia of six Italians who served in the Balkans.

NATO has agreed to take up the DU concerns at a meeting Tuesday in Brussels that had been requested by Italy, Belgium and Portugal. France joined the others Thursday in urging NATO to provide more information on the use of depleted uranium.

The concerns have been fanned by a number of reported leukemia cases among Balkans veterans in a number of European countries whose families believe resulted from exposure to depleted uranium.

Bacon said the Pentagon was aware of the concerns and would work closely with NATO.

"We have not found any unusual health effects at all," Bacon said of the US troops who have served in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Bacon said that US A-10 Thunderbolt attack jets fired 31,000 depleted uranium rounds during 100 missions carried out during the 1999 NATO air war in Kosovo.

Another 10,800 DU rounds were fired in Bosnia in 1994-95, according to NATO's military headquarters.

Last year, NATO provided UN inspectors with possible coordinates of 112 sites in Kosovo that were targeted with DU rounds.

UN experts who visited 11 of the sites in November found remnants of DU ammunition and low levels of radiation at impact points at eight sites, but did not detect "any wider area of contamination," according to the UN Environment Programme.

A US survey in March of nine DU target areas in the US sector of Kosovo found no trace of DU, Pentagon officials said.

DU was first used in combat during the 1991 Gulf War both as munitions and in armor on US heavy tanks and fighting vehicles.

Twice as dense as lead and with low levels of radioactivity, depleted uranium is prized by the US military because it can slice through enemy armor while protecting US tanks against attack.

Bacon credited DU armor for the fact that not a single US tank was destroyed by the Iraqis during the Gulf War.

After the war, DU exposure was suspected by some as a possible source of the mysterious illnesses experienced by Gulf War veterans. But a Pentagon investigation concluded last month that depleted uranium was unlikely to have been the cause.

A study by the Rand Corporation said that "cancer is the only radiation-associated disease that has been shown to be related to inhalation of radioactive particulates in humans, but there is no evidence documented in the literature of cancer or any other adverse health effect related to radiation received from exposure even to natural uranium, which is more radioactive than DU."

The US Veterans Administration has been tracking 33 veterans of the Gulf War who were wounded in "friendly fire" incidents involving depleted uranium rounds, at least 15 of whom still have DU fragments embedded in them.

Uranium has been found in their urine, but so far they have manifested no kidney disease or other symptoms attributable to radiation effects, the Rand study said.

A separate review by the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, however, concluded there was not enough evidence to determine whether uranium exposure is associated with adverse health outcomes.

"While the studies did not suggest that uranium has adverse health effects, the studies were of insufficient quality, consistency or statistical power to permit a conclusion regarding the presence or absence of an association in humans," it said.