FOUR countries now share the dubious distinction of having been attacked by depleted uranium weapons over the past ten years — Kuwait, Iraq, Bosnia and Yugoslavia. All the weapons, either in the form of tank shells or air-dropped cannon shells, were fired exclusively by American and British forces.

The Gulf War had the biggest use of DU weapons, principally because the United States-led coalition was facing a huge number of Iraqi tanks which were lined up, row after row, in entrenched positions along the Kuwait-Saudi Arabia border and in southern Iraq.

Many of the tanks, however, were old Russian T54s and T55s, which presented only a limited resistance to advanced Western weapons as their armour could be breached easily with ordinary tank shells. The main threat was posed by the more sophisticated, better-armoured T72s which were driven by members of the Revolutionary Guard divisions.

DU shells, principally fired by American M1 Abrams tanks, were used against the T72s to guarantee sufficient penetration of the armour to kill the occupants.

The Americans fired an estimated 5,000 DU tank rounds against Iraqi tanks in Kuwait and southern Iraq. But the low-flying American A10 Warthog “tank-busting” aircraft fired “tens of thousands” of DU shells, according to a paper produced by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority after the 1991 war.

Britain had DU shells for its Challenger 1 tanks in the Gulf War, but since the British tank regiments fought battles mainly with Iraqi T54s and T55s, they fired a limited number — only about 100. The T72s of the Republican Guards were left to the M1 Abrams, which are also armoured with depleted uranium to provide maximum protection.

After the ceasefire that ended the war with Iraq, huge numbers of destroyed Iraqi tanks and other armoured vehicles were scattered across the Kuwait desert and in southern Iraq, many of them hit by DU rounds.

The highest radioactive concentrations were recorded in special dump yards filled with destroyed armour that had been extracted from the desert and placed behind fencing for eventual disposal.

In Bosnia the use of DU shells was limited because Nato’s military aggressive action was restricted to relatively minor operations.

Towards the end of the Bosnian war, in 1994 and 1995, prior to the Dayton accords that resolved the brutal ethnic conflict between Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats, Nato launched attacks on Serb armour. Only the Americans used DU weapons, firing about 10,800 shells.

With most of the Serb tanks hidden in forests and mountains, the Nato attacks were generally focused on individual armoured vehicles that appeared in the open.

At the time of the attacks, the use of DU weapons to destroy Serb tanks did not provoke the level of public questioning that is now being raised over the 1999 Kosovo campaign.

During the 78-day Nato bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, and in particular against Serbian tanks and other armoured vehicles in Kosovo, American A10s fired 31,000 DU rounds. They landed on 112 sites in Kosovo, mainly in the south, and on ten sites in southern Serbia in the Presevo Valley area. No other Nato country fired DU rounds during the campaign.

Tank shells were not fired because Nato tanks entered Kosovo only as part of a peacekeeping force once the air campaign was over.

From 1991 to 1999 Nato forces would have fired a total of between 70,000 and 100,000 DU shells, covering a huge expanse of territory across Kuwait, southern Iraq, Bosnia and Yugoslavia. The results have still to be properly assessed in relation to the possible long-term health effects for the local populations and for the Nato troops who had the job of clearing up.

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