ROME, Jan 13 (Reuters) - An Italian soldier on Saturday rejected reassurances from NATO over the alleged health risks of depleted uranium munitions, blaming the weapons for the cancer which afflicted him after serving in the Balkans.

Valery Melis said he had been perfectly fit before leaving for a mission in Macedonia in 1999 but that he had fallen ill on his return with Hodgkin's disease, a cancerous illness affecting lymph glands.

Melis, 23, is one of several Italian soldiers who have complained of health problems since serving in the Balkans, where depleted uranium ammunition was employed by NATO forces.

The cases sparked an outcry in Italy and, in response to growing public concern, Rome earlier this month asked NATO to investigate at least seven deaths among its Balkan veterans.

The request, which NATO said was being taken seriously, opened the floodgates of a controversy as other European countries saw accounts of similar deaths and requests for action.

"I started to feel sick in October 1999, about five months after (I returned)," Melis told Reuters in an interview in a hotel in Rome.

Asked what he thought of NATO, U.S. and British reports saying there was no proven link between DU arms and cancer among soldiers, Melis said: "I am sure that depleted uranium is harmful."

Melis served near the border with Kosovo during NATO's 1999 air strikes to end Serb repression of ethnic Albanians in the Yugoslav province.

"NO ONE WARNED US"

"At the beginning I didn't think (my illness) was connected with uranium because at the time...no one had warned us or instructed us there could have been problems," Melis said.

He said he had linked his illness to DU after hearing of cases of leukaemia among other Italian Balkan veterans.

"The doubts I have concern the air that I was breathing and climatic factors like rain or wind."

An Italian association representing soldiers' families claimed earlier this month that NATO guidelines on how to deal with DU had been sent to Italian troops in the Balkans only after peacekeepers had already spent months in the area.

Melis's concerns were echoed by a U.S. army health physicist who served in the 1991 Gulf War, where DU arms were also used.

In an interview with Reuters, also on Saturday, Doctor Douglas Rokke, weakened by health problems ranging from kidney failure to partial sight loss, slammed DU weapons as a "crime against humanity."

Rokke said he had written DU safety training procedures for the U.S. Department of Defence after the Gulf War.

He said 20 percent of his 100-strong Gulf War team in charge of clearing up tanks hit by DU bullets had died, and most others were sick with respiratory, kidney, or cancer problems.

"What we found can be very simply summed up in three words: 'Oh my God'. The extent of contamination in and around the vehicles...and the immediate health problems that we observed scared us," Rokke said speaking in the same Rome hotel.

Holding a U.S. War Department document dated 1943, Rokke accused the United States of having been aware of DU health risks as far back as that date but of wanting to cover them up.

"The medical records of the people who were sick were all obliterated," he said. "We also know for a fact confirmed by an Italian general and the Italian troops in Kosovo that they never received DU training."

Depleted uranium is used in shells and bullets to increase their ability to pierce armour and can be pulverised on impact into a toxic radioactive dust, according to defence experts.

The World Health Organisation has said it is unlikely that exposure to DU weapons could have led to a higher risk of cancer among soldiers in the Balkans but that it will study the issue.

10:41 01-13-01