The government yesterday bowed to intense domestic and international pressure by agreeing to screen Balkans veterans for signs of contamination from depleted uranium used in US anti-tank shells.

But the announcement infuriated Gulf war veterans, whose supporters labelled the refusal to offer the tests to troops in previous conflicts a "vicious injustice". In an embarrassing u-turn, foreshadowed in yesterday's Guardian, John Spellar, the armed forces minister, told MPs that British troops who had served in Kosovo and Bosnia, as well as civilians working there, would be offered what he called "an appropriate voluntary screening programme".

He said Britain would step up its environmental monitoring of the Balkans and pool data collected by the UN and European allies, which have already introduced emergency screening for their troops. Until yesterday, the MoD had repeatedly spurned the need for any screening for DU.

But Mr Spellar insisted there was no evidence linking DU shells to ill health. He did not offer the new tests to troops in the Gulf war even though far more of the controversial weapons were fired there than in the Balkans. Mr Spellar delivered a robust defence of DU shells, used in British tanks as well as US aircraft, insisting they provided a "battle-winning military capability". He said: "Because of its density and metallurgic properties, depleted uranium isideally suited for use as a kinetic energy penetrator in anti-armour munitions".

At Nato headquarters in Brussels, Britain and the US joined forces to kill off an Italian proposal, backed by Germany, for the alliance's 19 member countries to stop using depleted uranium ammunition until further notice.  Mr Spellar conceded that debris from DU shells might present a "hazard from chemical toxicity" and a "low-level radiological hazard". Those risks, he said, arose from dust created when the weapons hit targets, but as expended rounds or fragments the hazards of DU were "negligible".

He said Gulf veterans - the cause of whose illnesses, he added, had not been discovered - had been offered screening for a "whole body load of uranium". But these tests were derided as inappropriate by Gulf war veterans and their medicaladvisers.  Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at Sunderland University, described the Ministry of Defence move as a "cynical betrayal" and "vicious injustice".

The MoD, he said, was testing for high-level exposure to soluble material, rather than long-term, low-level, exposure to radiation inside the body. It was indulging in "Mickey Mouse science".

Terry Gooding of the Gulf War Veterans Association said the MoD had never screened members for DU symptoms. Michael Burrows, senior coordinator of the association, said: "Mr Spellar said there is an insignificant danger posed by radiation from depleted uranium, but what about the dust and the effect it has on the lymphatic system?" He added: "I can't see that the voluntary screening will have any benefit whatsoever. The screening that he is talking about is for uranium, not depleted uranium."  Ministers are expected to await the publication of a report on DU being prepared by the Royal Society, expected in the summer , before finalising details of the screening programme.

Bruce George, chairman of the Commons defence committee, who had been threatening to mount his own inquiry into the affair, warned it was essential that the research was carried out as quickly as possible. "If it is true that there is a link between depleted uranium and leukaemia cancer, then people are going to die," he said. The government's announcement - pressed on the MoD by Downing Street - follows a spate of leukaemia cases among Balkan veterans in Italy, France, Portugal and Denmark, though scientists differ over whether the number is exceptional within the total groups.

Professor Eric Wright, an expert on radiation-induced leukaemia at the University of Dundee, said: "The diagnosis of leukaemia in many of these people is very soon after the alleged exposure. Whilst you can never say never in science, this does seems extraordinarily unlikely to be causal." Norwegian peacekeepers yesterday refused to sign contracts for service in Kosovo, demanding a clarification of the risk from ammunition that included DU.

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