BODY:
Some new details are available regarding the use of depleted uranium shells which the US Army used in the former Yugoslavia. There are reasons to assume that the Balkans are suffering a true humanitarian catastrophe thanks to NATO and particularly to the Americans.

Lieutenant General Boris Alekseev, Chief of the Ecological Security of the Russian Armed Forces, says that in Kosovo the Americans used both "clean" uranium-238 and "dirty" uranium-236. The assumption is supported by a thorough analysis of remnants of the shells with depleted uranium. The results are scandalous.

The so-called radiation weapons were considered a direction of research at the very onset of the nuclear detente. Bombs and powerful shells were to be stuffed with highly-toxic wastes and used to shower the enemy territory with them. Radioactive weapons had, however, a "flaw" - they did not kill immediately and merely contaminated the territory so that its effect would have become apparent only afterwards (just what happened in Yugoslavia).

The Soviet Union restricted its work on radioactive weapons to research, which was terminated in the 1950's. The United States, however, seems to have continued work on the barbarous weapons. In other words, American arsenals include radiological weapons now which may be compared to chemical warfare means.

It is common knowledge that the US Army used ammunition with depleted uranium cores during the Gulf War. Everybody knows as well that a lot of soldiers from the peacekeeping contingent got sick after Kuwait.

The situation in Kosovo is much more alarming. Almost 100 NATO servicemen fell ill with leukemia and seventeen of them have already died. The number of sick Serbians and Albanians is in the hundreds.

It is possible to judge the general environmental situation in Kosovo as poor and so on, but the traces of uranium-236 speak for themselves. The United States did use radiation weapons in the Balkans in the guise of armor-piercing shells with depleted uranium shells. That is a crime against humanity.(Translated by A. Ignatkin)

ORIGINAL-LANGUAGE: RUSSIAN