The findings of the Swiss laboratory (NBC Laboratorium, Spiez), are hardly surprising. In January of last year they published, in German, a fact sheet on DU, an English version of which they brought out in May. Their "conclusion" was that the DU, as an urgent question, is "not worthy of discussion".  Their sources? the RAND Corporation, and that great expert on the subject, Bernard Rostker.

Having established their credentials on the subject by finding the U236 in the samples, they are now playing on that to play down the whole story.

One of the authors of the fact sheet, Ernst Schmid, went along in November on the UNEP assessment mission to Kosovo.  He amazed -- and dismayed -- his colleagues by picking up DU fragments in his bare hands then making fun of the other scientists because they refused to touch it without gloves.

Last week, the Association of Foreign Correspondents in Switzerland and Liechtenstein organized, in coolaboration with the Swiss ministry of foreign affairs, a trip to the Spiez laboratory for the correspondents at the Geneva United Nations Office. The message handed out there was essentially the same: no problem, you could even eat it -- although you wouldn't want to do that because of possible chemical toxicity -- and the radiation would never harm you. Amen.

The Swiss government has a vested interest in playing up the harmlessness of DU. Switzerland is home to one of the biggest Kosovar communities in the world outside of Kosovo (the biggest, relative to its seven million population -- the biggest absolutely is in Germany -- all recruted initially as cheap labor). When the war was on, these people acted like a magnet to those fleeing the war, and, should there be a serious problem of contamination, the outflow would of course start again, with a concomitant inflow into Switzerland.

Further, the rumors here have it that the Swiss intend to use DU in the new CV-9030 tanks that they have ordered from Hägglunds, Sweden (test-firing it for the US Navy (!) up in the Alps -- the watershed of Europe -- among other places), for it is, after all, the weapon of the future for "no-loss" wars. It is particularly pertinent for the Swiss, since it is considered an ideal weapon for an army short on manpower, and Switzerland is in the process of cutting its military manpower by about two-thirds.

The World Health Organization held its Executive Board meeting  from 15 to 22 January. A major purpose of this annual meeting is to set the agenda for the World Health Assembly (held every year in May), the meeting of all the member states which debates and votes on WHO policies. (Officially, the WHO is the world's highest instance for setting public health policy.) The Executive Board discussed DU enough to decide to put it on this year's Assembly's agenda. Much later, during the last hour of the last session of the last day, the United States delegate to the Board intervened with some vehemence asking that the resolution putting DU on the Assembly's agenda be amended so that mention of DU's health effects be changed to read "possible health effects". The chairman, hoping to close the session, which was already running late (significant because overtime of sessions involves special compensation for the very highly paid thirty simultaneous interpreters who make it possible for the meeting to go on in six different languages), was thoroughly exasperated by this proposal. He announced that the resolution had been debated, voted on and passed, and that the proposal was utterly inappropriate, coming as it did as a sort of after-thought, especially at the last minute. So it was scuttled.

In the Monde diplomatique article in February (the English translation of which should be out this weekend -- the Spanish one is out, and so, apparently, are some of the other editions, such as Arabic, Portuguese, German, Italian, Swedish), the author mentions the agreement between the WHO and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which effectively gives veto power to the IAEA over anything the WHO might wish to undertake in the field of public health and radiation. This was voted at the World Health Assembly on 29 May 1959, and it explains why the WHO has been conspicuous by its absence in questions dealing with radiation -- especially low level -- and health. The WHO had been tipped off by the author about what was coming, saying that it was not his purpose to harm the reputation of the WHO but that he felt that this point (and many others appertaining to the cover up over the question of DU in both Kosovo and Iraq) should be put before the public. The WHO repsonded with the international appeal for $20 million for research on DU. The appeal was launched on the first of February, the day the February issue of the Monde dip was due out. If one reads the press release carefully, one realizes that they are scarecely on fire with enthusiasm for this project, and that much of it, spread over four years, will be devoted to gathering statistics from Kosovo and Iraq, by way of seeing if there has been an increase in any disease that could possibly be attributable to radiation.

Last Monday, 12 February, the Swiss anti-nuclear group CONTRATOM, organized a major event to publicize this WHO-IAEA accord and denounce it as a unnatural. Well before hand, the organizers went to the WHO to talk about the subject with Dr Richard Helmer, who is designated to deal with such questions. He was most indignant. The event involved a press briefing, held in a bus parked in the vast place des Nations in front of the main entry to the Geneva United Nations Office. Out on the lawn of the place a pantomime group performed: a woman, on stilts, in a long dress, bearing the sign "WHO" was surrounded by demons in black -- including black top hats --  who danced around her with long cords tied to her clothes, tying her up and untying her, bearing on their clotes the international symbol of radioactivity (the three balck triangles on a yellow field) and the sign "IAEA".

The organizers, after the visit to Dr Helmer, had been visited by the Geneva police, whom the WHO had put on the case to check to see if CONTRATOM had a permit for a demonstation in a public place and to make sure the Geneva police intended to send a riot squad. The organizers explained that the bus had the right to park on the square legally and the the six pantomimes actors had the right to perform on the lawn without a permit because the act was in way part of a demonstration of any sort. The police agreed.

The organizers had also received a letter from Dr Helmer, sent by first class mail and also by registered mail, denouncing what he saw as their willful misinterpretation of the WHO-IAEA accord and their desire to stir up trouble on the following Monday with their public "demonstartion".

The bus and the performers proceded to another of the UN Office's entries where the performance was repeated and where a letter was presented to Kofi Annon, UN Secretary General, requesting him to intervene to break the WHO-IAEA accord (which he could actually go a long way toward doing, even though both agencies are autonomous within the UN system). The letter was graciously received by Marie Heuzé, the chief UN spokesperson at the Geneva Office.

The last stop was the WHO for another performance ending with the WHO character breaking all the ties and setting herself free. Ann Kern, one of the top persons at the WHO, who accepted a letter for Dr Gro Harlem Burndtland (director general of the WHO), similar to the one to Kofi Annon, was most gracious, and was particularly impressed by the pantomime group (which has a reputation for world-class work). Another WHO executive, who accompanied her, however, was less than nice.

The WHO, in the end, was not amused. (Ann Kern has probably already been demoted.) The next morning, at the semi-weekly UN general press breifing, the WHO spokesperson, Gregory Hartl, did not mince his words when a journalist questioned him about the matter. He claimed that the WHO had explained everything to the people from CONTRATOM, but, essentially, they had refused to listen to reason.

Given the recalcitrance of the US and UK governments over DU, the WHO is probably the best hope for some sort of impartial, authoritative work on the subject, but, as one can see from the aforesaid, that hope is rather slender for the time being.

One last thing... In the Monde dip article, mention is made of how Klaus Toepfer received the most recent map from NATO last July and simply sat on it, apparently not even telling Pekka Haavisto, head of the Balkans Task Force and charged with investigating DU in Kosovo, about it until late in September. Haavisto's initial reaction was said to be to want to launch an investigative mission in the field before the winter set in. Toepfer, who had already supressed the preliminary assessment mission report from May 1999, where DU was first reported as a substantial problem arising from the bombings, and the first NATO map with its twenty-eight targets, apparently put his foot down, and announced that there would be nothing before the 24 October Kosovo municipal elections. The reason? Given the gravity of the situation, if any disquieting news leaked out about the mission's purpose, the elections could be disrupted by mass exoduses similar to those during the war -- and that, of course, would undermine US claims that the "humanitarian war" was resulting in the building of democratic structures. In the end, the field mission took place in November, and it is that mission's report that everybody is waiting to see, on March fifth, if all goes as planned. Besides the Spiez Laboratory people, there were people from the IAEA along on the trip, but also some others of outstanding international reputation, which allows one to hope...

And so it goes.

Robert James Parsons
rue de la Flèche 17
CH - 1207 Geneva, Switzerland
Telephone: +41 22 736-59-55

Geneva United Nations Office
Press Room No 1
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Telephone: +41 22 917-20-18

E-mail: rjparsons@hotmail.com