Wednesday January 3 5:03 AM ET
Italy Urges NATO to Probe 'Balkan Syndrome' Deaths

  ROME (Reuters) - Italy has urged NATO to investigate claims that six Italians who died after serving in the Balkans were killed by exposure to depleted uranium, Prime Minister Giuliano Amato said in an interview published Wednesday.

 Amato told La Repubblica newspaper that alarm in Italy over the so-called ``Balkan syndrome'' was ``more than legitimate.''

  ``This is a very delicate situation,'' he said. ``We've always known that (depleted uranium) was used in Kosovo but not in Bosnia. We've always known that it was a danger only in absolutely exceptional circumstances like, for example, picking up a fragment with a hand on which there was an open wound, while in normal circumstances it isn't dangerous at all.''

``But now we're starting to have a justified fear that things aren't that simple,'' Amato said.

 He said he had ordered Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini to ask NATO to open a probe into the cases, but denied the deaths could strain relations between Italy and the Atlantic alliance.

 Six Italians who served in the Balkans during the 1990s have since died of leukemia. The latest, a 24-year-old soldier from Sicily, died in November after an 18-month illness.

 Doctors have said there is insufficient evidence to link the deaths to exposure to uranium bullets but Italian media have claimed the number of deaths is too high to be coincidental.

 Some 60,000 Italian soldiers and 15,000 civilians served in the Balkans during the 1990s.

 According to Italian media reports, NATO used around 31,500 bullets and shells capped with depleted uranium during the campaign to end Serb repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.

Amato's call for a NATO probe follows similar expressions of concern from elsewhere in Europe.

 Friday, Belgium called for European Union defense ministers to discuss health problems suffered by peacekeepers in the former Yugoslavia, while the Portuguese media have reported that Portugal has ordered medical tests for its soldiers serving in Kosovo to check for exposure to radiation.

Concerns have also been raised by service members or civilian aid workers in Britain and the Netherlands.