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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 25, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Greek troops want out of Kosovo
Outcry against DU grows in Europe
By John Catalinotto
Despite denials by NATO and its member governments that depleted uranium is a
danger, people in Europe have reacted with growing anger and disquiet about
this threat to soldiers and civilians in occupied Kosovo.
In some European countries--Greece, Portugal and Italy especially--political
parties and other groups have already begun to organize strong protest
movements against DU weapons.
Anger and confusion has grown as NATO and government spokespeople contradict
earlier statements about the dangers of DU.
For example, NATO now admits that U.S. planes fired 10,800 DU shells into
Bosnia from 1995 to 1996. But in 1997, Lt. Cmdr. Louis Garneau, spokesperson
for the NATO occupation force in Bosnia, said that "at no time did NATO use
depleted uranium munitions during air strikes in Bosnia."
This was one of many lies that has destroyed NATO's credibility.
In addition, the European mainstream media are reflecting differences among
the NATO powers. These include DU use but go beyond this to other areas of
contention.
For example, in the Jan. 12 issue of the French newspaper Le Monde, more than
a page was devoted to the dangers of DU. But there were also two pages about
the debate within NATO over the presence of U.S. troops and other strategic
goals.
Seven Italian soldiers, five Belgians, two Dutch nationals, two Spaniards, a
Portuguese and a Czech national have died after taking part in the occupation
of Balkan countries. Four French soldiers have contracted leukemia.
The Yugoslav news agency Tanjug reports that a Hungarian soldier has also
died of leukemia and that his wife is demanding financial compensation from
the Hungarian Ministry of Defense.
Greek troops want out
The Daily Telegraph in England reported Jan. 15 that over one-quarter of the
1,400-plus Greek troops stationed in Kosovo have asked to leave because of
the increased risk of cancer.
The Greek defense minister had to say that the government would consider the
requests, but "we must first wait for the official results of the radiation
tests. If there is a general problem then NATO forces will take a joint
decision and leave together."
Half of the 400 volunteers set to join the Greek contingent have now
withdrawn their requests to take part in the occupation of Kosovo. On Jan.
11, the Greek Communist Party held protests demanding that Greek troops be
pulled out. Thousands gathered in Athens, Thessalonika, Patra, Serres, Chio
and Verioia to protest NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia and to demand
that Greek soldiers be pulled out of Kosovo.
The Portuguese Communist Party called for a national day of protest for Jan.
25, meeting in front of the prime minister's residence to demand an end to
the Portuguese military presence in the Balkans. The PCP also is "against the
dispatch of any more troops to Kosovo; for solidarity with the populations
affected by NATO bombings; and for NATO being abolished.
The PCP is a mass party with 130,000 members. It took a strong stand against
NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia during the 1999 war.
In Rome on Jan. 13, the Italian section of the Ramsey Clark Tribunal, which
includes supporters from the Pasti Foundation and the Communist Rifundazione
Party, held a protest meeting over the use of DU. This group is protesting
the dangers to Italian soldiers but also to the civilian population of
Yugoslavia. It organized hearings of popular war-crimes tribunals against
NATO after the aggression against Yugoslavia.
Stories about DU are now daily items in the Italian media. This coverage has
also spread, perhaps to a lesser degree, throughout all of Western Europe.
How Yugoslavs, Iraqis see DU
While the deaths of NATO soldiers have attracted media attention, the greater
number of DU victims come from the local civilian population of Bosnia and
Kosovo.
In a Jan. 13 article in the British daily The Independent, Robert Fisk wrote
of the town Hadjici. There, he asserts, "up to 300 out of 5,000 Serb refugees
whose suburb of Sarajevo was heavily bombed by NATO jets in the late summer
of 1995 have died of cancer.
"All the surviving refugees of Hadjici ... believe that the cancers and
leukemias that have affected this population were caused because the U.S.
A-10 bombers that struck their factories were firing depleted-uranium
weapons."
Snezana Pavlovic is head of the Environmental Monitoring Group from the
Institute of Nuclear Sciences "Vinca" radiation protection department in
Serbia. In a Jan. 16 interview with the Berlin daily Junge Welt, she said,
"NATO is denying the danger, using as a foundation for this denial the fact
that it is indeed hard to prove direct connection between consequences for
human health and depleted uranium on a small population."
But she said that "if one concrete person in his or her life is shown to have
been exposed to radiation, and gets an illness due to malignancy, radiation
must be considered its cause, because of all cancer-inducing factors
radiation is the most dominant one."
Pavlovic explained that contamination in Serbia itself is low and
concentrated, because few metal targets were hit and because the Yugoslav
army and Vinca cooperated to monitor and remove the contamination. In Kosovo,
however, KFOR occupation forces carried out no similar decontamination
effort. So both the people and environment there are at risk.
Iraqi scientists, isolated by murderous U.S.-led United Nations sanctions for
the last 10 years, have begun to break into the media with their studies on
increased leukemia and other cancers in the areas of Iraq hit hardest by
U.S.-fired DU weaponry during the 1991 war. A paper presented at a Nov. 25-26
conference in Gijon, Spain, presents a detailed report of the increases in
these diseases.
The International Action Center's "Sanctions Challenge IV," now in Iraq,
plans to bring back further information about the diseases believed to be
caused by depleted uranium. The Iraqis are undoubtedly the hardest-hit
population. The IAC will demand that Western countries allow Iraqi scientists
to visit and present their findings on DU, which is not now allowed.
- END -
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