BALLOZICE, Kosovo, Jan. 11 - Scientists in white overalls, accompanied by NATO soldiers, were collecting soil samples this week near a bombed-out bridge on a well-traveled road, but they told Etrem Javori, who lives and works here, nothing about what they were doing or why.

Mr. Javori and his family are not surprised, being used to a policy of silence on the part of their former leaders in the former Yugoslavia. But they have heard of the fuss over depleted uranium from television, even if they do not understand it.

Like the Kosovo war itself, the sudden, furious and deeply political debate in NATO over the possible ill effects of munitions reinforced by depleted uranium is a kind of Western morality play with Kosovo as its stage.

The people of Kosovo and this village - who presumably live with the effects all year round, and not for six-month tours of duty - are barely consulted or counted. And NATO - having fired the ammunition from great height at Serbian tanks and other targets, including decoys - is only now beginning to disclose the sites it bombed with weapons reinforced by depleted uranium and to consider cleaning up whatever debris might be left.

NATO says it fired some 31,000 rounds containing depleted uranium in Kosovo, as much as 12 tons of toxic and mildly radioactive uranium metal (a figure that pales next to the 300,000 tons used in the Persian Gulf war in 1991). Uranium is one of the heaviest metals, which makes it effective in piercing targets like tanks.

NATO has also been slow to identify and clear away the antipersonnel cluster bombs it dropped in Kosovo; even a large park in Pristina has not been fully cleared. NATO also bombed sensitive environmental sites in Serbia, including large petrochemical plants in the town of Pancevo, which the United Nations Environment Program has been regularly urging must be cleaned up with Western aid.

Just today, the United Nations administration in Kosovo announced that, in cooperation with NATO, it would fence off sites where depleted uranium was known to have been dropped and would put up multilingual signs reading: "Caution. Area may contain residual heavy metal toxicity. Entry not advised."

What most Kosovars will understand of such a sign can only be imagined. The people here, in interviews today, say they are simply trusting NATO, which went to war on their behalf against the Serbs, "to do whatever it is right and necessary to do," as Mr. Javori put it.

Mr. Javori, 22, is rebuilding his family house here, about 35 miles from Pristina, between the bombed- out bridge and the metal military bridge that Italian engineers finally put up to replace it, making it possible to drive to Pec without crossing muddy fields.

He spent the NATO war in 1999 hiding in the Turjak mountains that break the horizon to the distant south; his house had been destroyed by the Serbian Army in its offensive of August 1998. Only now does he have the peace and resources to begin rebuilding, though his funds do not stretch to the purchase of roof tiles, which he makes himself. He is more worried about money than about uranium, though he says: "My family is more worried than me. The son of my brother had some chest problems."

He watched the soldiers and the scientists collect samples from around the bombed bridge, one of those twisted memorials to the war that will probably never be removed or repaired, now that a replacement exists.

"A lot of people get sick this time of the year, with the flu and other problems," Mr. Javori said hopefully. "Maybe these soldiers don't know what is wrong and just put it down to uranium."

The World Health Organization has said it has found no increase in leukemia among the population of Kosovo, and the chief United Nations administrator here, Bernard Kouchner, a doctor and former French health minister, has dismissed the furor as "a wave of irrationality."

Uke Javori, 29, Etrem's cousin who lives nearby, has a 1-year-old son, born after the war, and insists that he is not worried about the boy's health. "If there is a problem, NATO and KFOR will take care of it," he said, using the acronym for the NATO-led Kosovo force that patrols the province. "If we didn't trust them, we wouldn't have asked them to come here."

Asked how he spent the war, Uke Javori paused and pointed to the distant mountains. "I went there," he said. "I've never left Kosovo, and I never will."

His brother, Muhammad Javori, 26, has left, to go to Italy, where he works in a paint factory. But he is back, on vacation, but working in the family grocery store, a roadside stop near the bridge, where traffic normally backs up some distance. There are competing stores, all with faded Albanian flags flying from their metal roofs, but the Javori family has a bit of parking, on the old road leading to the bombed bridge.

It has become a great commercial advantage, with many motorists stopping to buy some fruit, or cans of soda, or some cookies and cakes. Many of those products are made in Serbia, but Muhammad Javori says no one cares. "No one has died from poisoned cookies," he said, laughing.

He says he worries about spending so much time near a possible site for depleted uranium, but knows no one in the area who has become sick, with leukemia or anything else. "Who can really know?" he said. "It's a NATO secret."

Fehmi Gashi, a workman digging holes for a fence, said he had heard about depleted uranium on television, "but I don't know what it is." After an explanation, he sighed and said: "Well, we've had no problems, not yet, anyway. If there's a danger, NATO should have cleared it. They know everything that there is in Kosovo. I trust 100 percent in NATO."

Anyway, he said, rubbing his bristle, "what danger compares to what we went through already?"

To Vladimir and Volodya, two Russian soldiers controlling the new bridge, life in Kosovo seems fine. They have been here four months, with another eight or so to go. The pay is good, and they have been told not to worry about depleted uranium.

"They say they've checked with a Geiger counter, and it's normal here," Vladimir said. Does he believe them? "Sure," he said, laughing. "Why not?"

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