Wars are won or lost but the follies go on for ever. In Bosnia, the Serbs lost, which – given their militias' propensity to massacre tens of thousands of Muslims – seems only fair. And Bosnia at peace under Nato is better than Bosnia at the mercy of its own home-grown murderers. I far prefer driving past a British, German or Swedish tank on the road from Sarajevo to Banja Luka than the drunken rapists of Arkan's White Eagles whom I used to come across six years ago. Plastic cups were a must in my car – to avoid drinking directly from the bottle of plum brandy that these odious men would thrust angrily towards my lips. But that was then.

So why, I ask myself, do the follies go on? In Vietnam, they had the five o'clock follies (the daily news briefings). During the Kosovo war, Nato's follies started in Brussels at midafternoon. In Bosnia, the S-For follies – and those of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the UN – continue still. They start twice a week at 11.30am. And The Independent can today print the entire transcript of what S-For had to tell the press in Sarajevo at their first meeting this week. "S-For has no statement today," Captain Susan Gray told us. And that was that.

No mention of depleted uranium, no reference to the surge in cancers among Serbian civilians close to Nato's 1995 bombings, no suggestion that S-For might have some interest in researching the cancer and leukaemia outbreak – if only for the safety of its own soldiers. No, S-For has no statement.

It's a bit like reading the Nato-led army's house newspaper, the unhappily named S-For Informer. You'd think that any military-oriented journal would carry an article or two about the subject preoccupying Nato governments and Western armies: DU. Yet those letters do not sully the pages of the S-For Informer. There are stories aplenty about S-For's Christmas goodwill towards the children of Bosnia, about Lord Robertson of Port Ellen's visit to Bosnia and Franco-Canadian military co-operation; there's even a brief reference to the discovery of a cache of arms belong-ing to "anti-Dayton elements". Three-quarters of the back page is devoted to S-For soldiers' opinions on the Bosnian winter. "It's a bit like autumn, only colder," says Flight Lieutenant Jo Goodwin of the RAF. So you can forget DU.

True, there were statements at the S-For follies from the OSCE and UN and the High (sic) Representative about compensation payments, local election results, the first collective Bosnian UN observer team to start duties abroad and the implementation of property laws. Only when I asked why the assembled officials didn't seek a World Health Organisation (WHO) investigation of DU and the health of the civilian population here – as Bernard Kouchner has done in Kosovo – did the UN's man tell us that S-For had been asked for a list of "contaminated [sic] sites" and that a UN team may soon start research on this very subject in Bosnia. How soon "soon" was, no one knew.

It's a very odd situation. Question any Nato officer at S-For headquarters why they aren't themselves looking at the cancer data available in local hospitals and you'd think you'd just asked a question about their sex lives. "Your articles are emotional and are stirring up civilian fears," I was gravely informed – as if suffering and dying of unexplained cancers wouldn't worry a soul.

Last week, too, S-For announced that after examination by its German contingent at Hadjici, DU rounds found there "pose no significant health hazard to the local population or S-For troops". The "local population" at Hadjici is now Muslim. But S-For did not investigate the health of the population who were at Hadjici at the time of the bombings – who were Serbs."S-For is not Nato," I was also admonished – and I can see why some non-Nato S-For troops would like the dissociation. But Nato's star logo adorns S-For statements, it appears above the heads of its briefers at their follies and S-For statements often direct readers to Nato websites. When there are statements, that is.

Yes, Bosnia at peace under Nato is certainly better than the atrocity-filled war I experienced here more than five years ago. And that was one argument privately used on me after the S-For follies to deflect questions about DU. But here the logic goes grey. Ending mass murder does not, surely, entitle us to contaminate the land of the survivors.

To be fair, there are Nato men who understand all too well the implications of the DU debate. "It would be the job of the BiH (Bosnia-Herzegovina) government to initiate the research you are talking about," another officer remarked to me. Then he added, quietly: "How can we get the BiH government to start an inquiry?" But of course, there is no way. The Bosnian authorities are beholden to Nato. They think it's Nato's job to investigate DU. They won't rock the boat.

So there you have it. Officially and on the record, it can safely be said that S-For has no statement today.