[Hack journalists who write suborned apologies like that in the last paragraph below would be well to remember that covering up war crimes is also a war crime. In legal parlance, it's called being an accessory after the fact.]

Friday January 5 1:56 PM ET
EU Backs Prodi Over 'Balkan Syndrome' Warning

LONDON (Reuters) - The European Commission Friday stood by warnings from its president about the potential dangers of uranium-tipped shells amid a swirl of competing claims about the health risks to troops using the controversial ammunition.

The Defense Department said it had no plans to suspend use of the tank-killing shells but would cooperate with any NATO study into possible deaths from cancer and other ills -- the so-called ``Balkan Syndrome.´´

Britain said it had no evidence NATO's use of the munitions adversely affected British peacekeepers in the Balkans and had no plans to screen soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia.

Turkey and Yugoslavia found no cases of radiation exposure among their troops, and the International Committee of the Red Cross disclosed that tests on over 30 staff deployed during the 1999 Kosovo war showed no traces of depleted uranium.

Depleted uranium is used in the tips of missiles, shells and bullets to boost their ability to penetrate armor and can be pulverized on impact into a toxic radioactive dust easily ingested by the body, defense experts say.

Kosovo moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova said he feared irresponsible claims could lead to a stampede of peacekeeping and international agency staff from the province.

But Germany's Taz daily newspaper reported that tests conducted by the U.N. Environmental Program on sites in Kosovo struck by NATO forces showed evidence of significant radioactivity.

Sites ``Considerably Contaminated´´

The newspaper said the UNEP report found that eight of 11 sites a U.N. team tested in November were in part ``considerably contaminated´´ with uranium dust and unexploded munitions. Russia, which has about 3,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo, and France joined several countries backing Italy's call for NATO to examine the claims, and Portugal began testing 10,000 military and civilian personnel who had served in the Balkans.

``The Italian request is justified,´´ French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, adding that France would ´´provide its partners with all the information they needed.´´ NATO said the Italian request would be examined by the North Atlantic Council next Tuesday.

Wolfgang Koehnlein, the deputy head of Germany's Radiation Safety Committee, backed a ban on the use of depleted uranium. ``It is high time to demand a stop to these tank-penetrating weapons, because they hurt not only soldiers but also a large bulk of the population,´´ he told InfoRadio.

Prodi told Italian radio Thursday that the weapons should be abolished if they posed even minimal risk, adding, ``Even if this risk was not there I don´t like the idea of using these particular weapons. ``I want the truth to be ascertained,´´ Prodi said. EU and NATO diplomatic sources suggested that Prodi, a former Italian premier, was trying to support Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, who is under pressure from left-wing allies to probe charges that NATO's use of the rounds in its 1999 air war in Kosovo caused six leukemia deaths in Italy.

France confirmed Thursday that four of its soldiers had contracted leukemia after working in the Balkans.

The French Defense Ministry said there was nothing currently linking their illness to exposure to the ammunition, but added it had ordered an investigation into how the soldiers became ill and the risks they had faced.

Eu Right To Be Concerned

Prodi's spokesman, Jonathan Faull, said his boss was right to speak out, that the Commission was entitled to be concerned, and that the EU's 15 member states would also support it.

``The president did not say anything untoward. He made his comments at the right moment,´´ he said.

``In case people might be thinking that this is not necessarily the European Union´s business, we have a well-established policy in the Balkan region,´´ Faull added.

U.S. attack jets fired some 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition against Serbian tanks and armored vehicles during the 1999 Kosovo campaign, according to a U.N. expert.

Some 10,000 were fired in neighboring Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, NATO officials reported last month.

Despite the absence of scientific evidence that its debris is life-threatening, some military analysts say the ammunition has become the target of such an obsessive international campaign that it is now more of a political liability than it is worth.