Los Angeles Times
January 20, 2001
Release of depleted uranium suspected in Germany
http://www2.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisStory=83383016

BERLIN -- German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping told parliament on Friday that the U.S. Army has informed Berlin of nine incidents of known or suspected releases of depleted uranium by U.S. forces at German bases over the past two decades.

No Germans have reported illness from suspected exposure to the substance, however. That means the political fortunes of opposition lawmakers whose party was in power until two years ago could be in more danger than people in the areas where ammunition containing the slightly radioactive heavy metal accidentally exploded.

In the nervous atmosphere enveloping Germans already confronting one environmental crisis -- mad cow disease -- the incidents involving depleted uranium are likely to intensify the current health panic and feed political squabbling over leaders' failure to protect and inform the public.

Scharping insinuated during his appearance before the Bundestag that the 16-year government headed by Helmut Kohl, whose Christian Democrats are now in opposition, failed to tell the public about the incidents, which date back as far as 1981.

"One has to ask what my predecessors knew about this," Scharping said during his testimony.

German news media quickly recalled queries made of Kohl's government in 1995 and again in 1997 by the now-ruling Social Democrats about risks posed by the presence of U.S. munitions containing depleted uranium. The Defense Ministry responded to the first of those inquiries with a categorical denial that any depleted uranium was contained in weapons used for training and exercises. Two years later, it said it was unable to answer because of the need for military secrecy.

The U.S. Army report listed four known releases of depleted uranium through accidental firings of tank rounds or during fires on tanks that detonated ammunition. Five other incidents were also detailed in which release of depleted uranium was suspected to have occurred but no records could be located to confirm them.

Most, if not all, of the accidents detailed in the report delivered to Scharping on Wednesday were reported to German authorities at the time they occurred, and German firefighters or ordnance disposal experts assisted in some of the responses, according to Jim Boyle, spokesman for the U.S. Army Europe headquarters in Heidelberg.

Many Europeans suspect that depleted uranium has caused or contributed to cases of leukemia suffered by alliance troops deployed in the Balkans. The leukemia deaths of several European soldiers who served in Kosovo or Bosnia-Herzegovina prompted the U.S. Army report, Boyle said.

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