A Canadian Forces veteran diagnosed with leukemia after serving in Bosnia urged Ottawa yesterday to join the call for a NATO investigation into the use of depleted-uranium ammunition in the Balkans.

Reza Mehran, a former army major and surgeon, said Canada should join Italy, Belgium and Portugal in urging the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to find out whether soldiers' deaths from leukemia are linked to uranium in thousands of shells that alliance forces fired over the war-torn region.

Six Italian soldiers have died from leukemia after serving in Bosnia. Five Belgian troops and one from Portugal have also died from suspicious causes, leading their governments to call for a NATO investigation.

"What is important is to find out how many people are sick and with what, and to find out where they were," Dr. Mehran, 39, said from his home in Ottawa.

But the Canadian Forces director of medical policy said there is no evidence that depleted uranium has made Canadian peacekeepers sick, and no reason to widen a voluntary testing program for veterans.

In fact, Colonel Ken Scott, the doctor responsible for the depleted-uranium testing, said a comprehensive program to test veterans for traces of uranium could itself raise the rate of anxiety-induced illness among test subjects.

"Being concerned or worried can make you unwell," he said.

Depleted uranium, known as DU, is a high-density byproduct of the process used to make uranium fuel for nuclear weapons and reactors. Shells and missiles containing it pack a stronger penetrating punch, and it is used to strengthen armour plating.

Last month, NATO said U.S. planes fired 10,800 DU shells in Bosnia during 1994 and 1995 when the alliance carried out several United Nations-sanctioned air strikes to punish Bosnian Serb forces for attacks against civilians and peacekeepers.

NATO officials said the use of DU weapons was never a secret, but Italian Defence Minister Sergio Mattarella later said Italy did not know they had been deployed.

The alliance has also acknowledged using DU ammunition during another Balkan campaign: its 1999 onslaught in Kosovo.

Captain Daryl Morrell, a spokesman for Canada's Department of National Defence, said he doesn't know whether Canadian officials knew DU ammunition was being used in Bosnia.

Concern about exposure to DU surfaced after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when thousands of U.S. veterans reported unexplained health problems that became known as Gulf War syndrome.

More recently, Balkan syndrome fears have been expressed by veterans of UN peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Croatia, as well as by NATO forces that operated there.

Environmental scientists have said ingested uranium can seriously affect a person's health. But U.S. and Canadian military officials have said that extensive studies show that uranium levels in the tissues of veterans are no higher on average than among civilians, and that those veterans who do have elevated levels show no abnormal illness rates.

Dr. Mehran is a former military surgical-hospital chief. He served with a UN force near Sarajevo in 1993 and a NATO force in northern Bosnia in 1996 for a total of nearly a year.

He was diagnosed with leukemia and bone cancer after falling ill overseas. The leukemia, or blood cancer, is in remission and the bone cancer appears to be gone after a knee-replacement operation, he said.

He said he could have been exposed to uranium in fumes or dust, or in the blood of dead soldiers during autopsies, but he doesn't know whether his illnesses are related to the radioactive element.

"It would be nice to know," he said.

But Col. Scott said a Canadian study of more than 6,000 Persian Gulf and Balkan veterans showed no abnormal illness rates.