NATO Review Finds No Weapons-Illness Link

NATO said Tuesday that data from its 19 member states show no link between depleted uranium munitions and “Balkan syndrome” cancers, but the alliance’s assurances failed to calm an international uproar.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica accused NATO of having a “depleted conscience” for using the shells and bullets during the 1999 Kosovo conflict.

After two weeks of mounting controversy, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said its chief medical officers had compared evidence and seen nothing that pointed to a serious health risk from depleted uranium munitions used in the Persian Gulf War and the Balkans.

Their report was NATO’s most coordinated response yet to a debate that erupted early this month, causing disarray in the alliance’s ranks as some countries suggested a connection between leukemia and other diseases among young NATO soldiers who had served as peacekeepers in the former Yugoslav federation.

“We cannot identify any increase in disease or mortality in soldiers who have deployed to the Balkans as compared to those soldiers who have not deployed,” NATO medical committee chairman Gen. Roger Van Hoof said Tuesday after meeting with his 18 colleagues the day before.

“On the evidence available, a causal link cannot be identified between depleted uranium and the complaints or pathologies,” he told a news conference at NATO headquarters. Nonetheless, a “timely investigation” is necessary to allay public fears, he said.

U.S. Army medical expert Col. David Lam said depleted uranium’s possible adverse health effects are “an extremely complex physiological issue which is unfortunately impacted more by political and emotional aspects than by scientific ones.”

At the European Parliament, however, Socialists said they would seek a moratorium on the munitions pending independent study. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who was NATO secretary-general during the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, was to address an EU debate on the issue today in Strasbourg, France.

Kostunica, on a visit to Greece, demanded international investigations.

“Our authorities have warned about the use of DU since 1995,” the Yugoslav leader said. “We are ready to work on this with other countries, but it seems there is less willingness from some NATO countries.”