February 08, 2001
Kuwait asks IAEA to test for DU radiation
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=9098
Kuwait |Reuters | 08-02-01

Kuwait asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) yesterday to check its territory for radiation because of the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons by U.S.-led forces in the 1991 Gulf War.

"I am certain that Kuwaiti land is free of this radiation," Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al Ahamd Al Sabah told the official Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) after talks with Mohammad el-Baradei, the visiting head of the IAEA. "But for my ease of mind and that of the country's residents I have asked Dr Mohammad to acertain that there is no such radiation."

Fears of radioactivity resurfaced in Kuwait recently after an international media furore erupted over the use of DU weapons and reports that some NATO peacekeepers have died or fallen ill after being exposed to DU munitions in Bosnia and Kosovo in 1995 and 1999.

U.S.-led multinational forces fired DU weapons at Iraqi forces whom they drove out of Kuwait during the Gulf War after a seven-month occupation. Kuwaiti officials have stressed in recent weeks that radiation levels are within the normal range.



Comments:

    Current radiation protection standards offer no protection against airborne uranium dose to lung, nor predict the toxic lymph node DU burdens.