IN THE past week, children running amid the bombed-out Yugoslav tanks abandoned at a wrecked bus station in southern Kosovo have had to share their radioactive playground with a lot of visitors. The next batch of officials will be carrying a warning sign.

It will read: “Caution. Area may contain residual heavy metal toxicity. Entry not advised.”

The United Nations administration in Kosovo has decided that the residents of sites such as the one in Klina, which US jets peppered with uranium-enhanced anti-tank ammunition, need the advice. But the message will be next to meaningless to the ethnic Albanian families who have lived by the smashed battle tanks and armoured personnel carriers for the past 18 months and stripped the vehicles for souvenirs and scrap metal immediately after Serb forces left.

A Western doctor working in Pristina said: “If depleted uranium (DU) dust is toxic, if it does cause leukaemia, and if the youngsters have the heavy metal dust left by the shells in their systems, then the damage is probably done and will become tragically clear in the years ahead.”

The warning sign is evidently not aimed at the local population but is more of a message to the wider world, put up by an administration that, while largely convinced that the DU uproar is groundless, feels it needs to be seen to do something, Western diplomats say.

Beqir Rraci lives yards from one of Klina’s wrecked tanks, in a row of dilapidated detached houses, some of which still bear scars from the conflict. Recently he watched white-suited Italian nuclear, chemical and biological warfare specialists checking the tanks for radiation. Last week he watched them return for the benefit of the world’s television cameras. Also present was Bernard Kouchner, who, as a medical doctor and former French Health Minister before becoming the UN chief administrator in Kosovo, should be ideally placed to pronounce on the dangers of depleted uranium. But he left office last week.

“There is no real risk,” he declared — but his visit and the face masks worn by the Italian troops around him were enough to sow fear in 74-year-old Mr Rraci’s mind.

“The kids play on the tanks. Local people took what they need from them. They’ve been here for 18 months. If they’re dangerous, maybe they should move them,” he said as M Kouchner’s motorcade headed back to his waiting helicopter.

A team of UN Environment Programme scientists came to Kosovo in November after finally dragging out of Nato the details of where US A10 Warthog jets fired DU-tipped “tankbusting” shells during the Western alliance’s 1999 air war against Yugoslavia. Choosing 11 from 112 strike sites, they found eight with low-level traces of radiation. An Italian inquiry belatedly learnt from the Pentagon that DU had also been fired in Bosnia.

Nato insisted that the shell debris was safe, but promised to set up a commission to look into the matter.

M Kouchner told Kosovo politicians that the panic was “hysteria, a wave of irrationality”, but decided to put up the warning signs and call in World Health Organisation experts to help his officials to run a voluntary screening programme.

The day after M Kouchner’s visit to Klina, the Portuguese foreign, defence and science ministers gave yet another press conference in the tiny, rundown town. They were almost sure it was safe, they said, but, all the same, they were going to take samples of soldiers’ urine, local food, water and air back with them to Lisbon for further tests, just to be “on the safe side”.

Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.