IRAQ SANCTIONS MONITOR Number 186 Thursday, January 11, 2001 The daily Monitor is produced by the Mariam Appeal. Tel: 00 44 (0) 207 403 5200. Website: www.mariamappeal.com. _________________________________________________ LONDON (AP) _ A British Army report warned almost four years ago that soldiers exposed to dust from depleted uranium shells might be at risk of developing cancers, according to a document carried by the British media on Thursday. The report, was prepared by the Headquarters of the Army"s Quartermaster-General as an internal document for military officials, said that soldiers doing salvage work inside vehicles which had been damaged by depleted uranium shells faced up to eight times the acceptable level of uranium exposure, according to the British Broadcasting Corp. and newspaper reports. The Ministry of Defense immediately countered that the document was a "discredited" draft paper, prepared by a trainee and never endorsed by senior staff. "Certain elements are scientifically incorrect or misleading," the Ministry of Defense said in a statement. The British government reiterated its position that medical evidence has so far failed to prove any link between the heavy metal, favored because of its ability to penetrate armor, and soldiers being diagnosed with cancer after coming into contact with the munitions. The statement reflected comments made earlier in the day by NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, who told reporters in Brussels that there was no scientific evidence that exposure to armor-piercing munitions containing depleted uranium posed a significant health risk. Nevertheless, he said NATO has set up an action plan because of European countries" fears about health risks to soldiers assigned to the Balkans, where depleted uranium munitions were used in combat. But the document, which all the news organization said had been leaked to them, still threatened to inflame fears already sweeping across Europe that soldiers" lives had been put at risk in Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as in the Gulf War. Depleted uranium munitions were used in all of those wars. Last month, Italy began studying the illnesses of 30 Balkans veterans, seven of whom died of cancer, including five cases of leukemia. In France, four soldiers are being treated for leukemia. Several European countries have begun screening soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the Balkans. Many civilian aid agencies are doing the same. Britain on Tuesday bowed to pressure and said it would offer screening to veterans of the Kosovo and Bosnian wars for signs of illness. According to published excerpts of the leaked Ministry of Defense report, the army warned in 1997 that the risk of exposure to the "hazardous" uranium dust "must be reduced." "Inhalation of insoluble uranium dioxide dust will lead to accumulation in the lungs with very slow clearance _ if any," the British media quoted the document as saying. "Although the chemical toxicity is low, there may be localized radiation damage of the lung leading to cancer." The opposition Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats called on government officials to explain the report"s findings. ________________________________________________ Britain dismisses own report backing uranium risk LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - An internal British Defence Ministry report warned four years ago that exposure to ammunition coated with depleted uranium increased the risk of cancer, British media said on Thursday. A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman confirmed a report was prepared on the subject but said it was flawed, written by a trainee and never endorsed in any way. However the mere existence of the report added fuel to a debate in Britain and elsewhere about the safety of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition used by British, U.S. and other western armies in the Gulf and Balkan wars. NATO promised on Wednesday to investigate the effects of DU used in tank-busting ammunition, but insisted it posed a minimal health risk. As more countries stepped up screening of war veterans who may have been exposed to the munitions" mildly radioactive residue, NATO said it would do all it could to reassure troops and civilians worried by recent cancer scares. NATO ambassadors agreed a "robust" action plan to look into the effects of using DU in weapons which have been linked to dozens of cases of leukaemia among Western peacekeepers who served in the Balkan conflicts. Details of the 1997 British report were splashed on the front pages of the Guardian and Independent newspapers under headlines like "MoD knew shells were cancer risk." "The warnings, in an internal MoD document are in marked contrast to persistent public assurances -- repeated by the Armed Forces Minister John Spellar to parliament on Tuesday -- playing down the risk of DU," the Guardian said. The army medical report said inhalation of dust from DU led to accumulation in the lungs "with very slow clearance -- if any." "Although the chemical toxicity is low, there may be localised radiation damage of the lung, leading to cancer," the two newspapers quoted the report as saying. "All personnel should be aware that uranium dust inhalation carries a long term risk ... the (dust) has been shown to increase the risks of developing lung, lymph and brain cancers." The MoD spokesman told Reuters the report was scientifically incorrect and misleading. "It is flawed. It was done by a trainee. It was never endorsed by senior staff. It was not taken forward. It is not an official position of ours," the spokesman said. The spokesman was unable to say whether the trainee author was a military or other doctor. Britain has agreed to test soldiers for possible health problems while insisting there was no evidence of a link. On Wednesday Spellar told parliament a voluntary screening programme would be set up for people who served in the Balkans but said the move was a response to public concern not evidence of illness caused by depleted uranium. NATO has appeared split between the likes of Britain and the United States, who argue there is no health risk from DU weaponry and Germany, Italy, Portugal and Belgium who want a full NATO inquiry. The Government is coming under increasing pressure to reveal what advice they have received about health risks associated with uranium shells. ________________________________________________ These children had cancer. Now they are dead. I believe they were killed by depleted uranium >From The Independent January 10th, 2001 Robert Fisk THEY SMILED as they were dying. One little girl in a Basra hospital even put on her party dress for The Independent's portrait of her. She did not survive three months. All of them either played with explosive fragments left behind from US and British raids on southern Iraq in 1991 or were the children - unborn at the time - of men and women caught in those raids. Even then, the words "depleted uranium" were on everyone's lips. The Independent's readers cared so much that they contributed more than pounds 170,000 for medicines for these dying children. Our politicians cared so little that they made no enquiries about this tragedy - and missed a vital clue to the suffering of their own soldiers in the Balkans eight years later. In March 1998, Dr Jawad Khadim al-Ali - trained in Britain and a member of the Royal College of Physicians - showed me his maps of cancer and leukaemia clusters around the southern city of Basra and its farming hinterland, the killing fields of the last days of the 1991 Gulf War that were drenched in depleted uranium dust from exploding US shells. The maps showed a four-fold increase in cancers in those areas where the fighting took place. And the people from those fields and suburbs where the ordnance were fired were clustered around Dr Ali's cancer clinic in Basra. Old men, young women with terrible tumours, whole families with no history of cancer suffering from unexplained leukaemias. They stood there, smiling at me, wanting to tell their stories. Their accounts, tragically, were the same. They had been close to the battle or to aerial bombing. Or their children had been playing with pieces of shrapne after air raids or their children - born two years after the war - had suddenly began to suffer internal bleeding. Of course, it could have been one of Saddam's bombed chemical plants - or the oil fires - that were to blame. But a comparison of the location of cancer victims to air raids, right across Iraq from Basra and Kerbala to Baghdad, are too exact to leave much doubt. And tragic did not begin to describe the children's "wards of death" in Baghdad and Basra. Ali Hillal was eight when I met him - he was to live less than two months more - lived next to a television broadcasting transmitter and several factories at Diala, repeatedly bombed by Allied aircraft in February 1991. He was the fifth child of a family that had no history of cancers - he now had a tumour in his brain. His mother, Fatima, recalled the bombings. "There was a strange smell, a burning, choking smell, something like insecticide," she told me. Little Youssef Abdul Raouf Mohammed came from Kerbala, close to Iraqi military bases bombed in the war. He had gastro-intestinal bleeding. There were blood spots in his cheeks, a sure sign of internal bleeding. Ahmed Fleah had already died in the children's ward, bleeding from his mouth, ears, nose and rectum. He took two weeks to bleed to death. About the same time, the first British "Gulf War syndrome" victims were telling of their suffering. It was often identical to the stories - told in Arabic - that I listened to in Iraqi hospitals. Something terrible happened in southern Iraq at the end of the Gulf War, I reported. But the British Government - now so anxious to allay fears for the health of British soldiers who have been in contact with depleted uranium shells in the Gulf and in the Balkans - put their collective nose in the air. Doug Henderson, then a defence minister - and later to be such a public supporter of Nato's bombing of Kosovo - wrote in an extraordinary letter that "the Government is aware of suggestions in the press, particularly by Robert Fisk of The Independent, that there has been an increase in ill-health - including alleged [sic] deformities, cancers and birth defects - in southern Iraq, which some have attributed to the use of depleted uranium-based ammunition by UK and US forces during the 1990-91 Gulf conflict. "However, the Government has not seen any peer-reviewed epidemiological research date on this population to support these claims and it would therefore be premature to comment on this matter." And there Mr Henderson lost interest. Had he been able to see Hebba Mortaba, the tiny girl in Basra whom I met with a tumour the size of a football pushing up from her stomach, perhaps his reply would have been more serious. Many of the other children in this purgatorial hospital were bald and suffering from non-Hodgkins lymphoma. All came from heavily-bombed areas of Iraq. A few knew they were dying; some told me they would recover. None of them did. When in 1998 I visited the killing fields outside Basra, the burned-out Iraqi tanks still lay where they had been attacked by Major General Tom Rhame's US First Infantry Division, bombed amid the farms and streams. Many of the local farmers had relatives dying of unexplained cancers. One of them, Hassan Salman, walked up to me through the long grass, a man with a distinguished face, brown from the sun. "My daughter-in-law died of cancer just 50 days ago," he said. "She was ill in the stomach. Her name was Amal Hassan Saleh. She was very young - she was just 21 years old. A woman walked out of a tomato field and offered me an over- large pale green tomato, a poisoned fruit according to the Basra doctors, from a poisonous war, grown on a dangerous stem, bathed in fetid water. Yes, of course, it made good propaganda for Saddam. Yes, of course, he gassed the Kurds who had gone over to Iran's side in the 1980-88 Iran- Iraq war. Yes, of course, the Iraqis later laid on a propaganda showcase of statistics for their dying - and mock funerals for the infant dead. But the children I met were dying - and have died. Their leukaemia was real and growing. One Baghdad doctor had just watched a child patient die when I went to visit him. He sat in his chair in his clinic with his head in his hands, the tears flowing down his face. This was not propaganda. In Basra, in the poorest part of the city - still, ironically, regularly attacked by the USAF and RAF - I asked a random group of women about the health of their families. "My husband has cancer," one said. Sundus Abdel- Kader, 33, said her aunt had just died suddenly of leukaemia. Two other women interrupted to say that they had younger sisters suffering from cancer. And so it went on, in a society where merely to admit to cancer is regarded as a social stigma. Why had so many Iraqis - especially children - suddenly fallen victims, I asked myself, to an explosion of leukaemia in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War? Of course, the victims were Iraqis. They were Muslims. They lived - and died - in a far-away country. They were not Caucasians or Nato soldiers. But I do wonder if I'm going to have to tour the children's wards of Bosnia and Serbia in the years to come, and see again the scenes I witnessed in Iraq. Or perhaps the military wards of European countries. That's why I asked Nato just after the Kosovo bombing in 1999 for the locations of depleted uranium munition explosions. The details, I was told, were "not releasable". __________________________________________________ LABOUR BACKS DOWN ON URANIUM SHELLS >From The Daily Mail January 10th, 2001 By Michael Clarke Home Affairs Correspondent DEFENCE Ministers staged a dramatic U-turn yesterday over health fears about depleted uranium weapons. Armed Forces minister John Spellar announced a screening programme for troops who have served in the Balkans, where U.S. jets fired tens of thousands of DU shells. The move follows increasing alarm across Europe over deaths and illnesses among veterans of peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo. Mr Spellar's Commons announcement bore all the signs of panic in Downing Street, with an election expected within four months. Policy was thrown into reverse so swiftly that Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, who had planned to make an announcement tomorrow, was still on a visit to Sweden. It was the latest in a series of major statements he has missed, on topics including the European Army, the controversial 1994 crash of an RAFChinook and payments to Japanese prisoners of war. The climbdown did little to appease former soldiers, who have been reporting an increasing number of health problems. They warned that the tests could be rigged. Professor Malcolm Hooper of Sunderland University, a member of the Gulf War illnesses inter-Parliamentary Group, warned: 'The MoD are past masters at doing poor science and not setting up the experiments that need to be done.' Veterans believe the MoD and the Pentagon are determined to keep DUweapons in their arsenals, as the most effective way to destroy tanks. The heavy metal, twice as dense as lead, can easily punch through thick armour. But on impact, the uranium is vapourised into a cloud of dust which can be deadly if swallowed or inhaled. The Ministry insists the dust is a threat only if peacekeeping troops climb inside wrecked Serb tanks. But, until yesterday, they had repeatedly refused to monitor Balkans veterans for uranium poisoning, despite evidence that the DU can spread through the air and into ground water. Checks on contamination levels in Bosnia and Kosovo will now also be stepped up. The screening programme, expected to be finalised after the publication of a report on DU by the Royal Society in March, will be offered to 50,000 troops and 5,000 civilian staff. But Shaun Rusling, 41, chairman of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association, warned that it would have to be more effective than the tests on troops from the war against Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of DUshells were fired. He said: 'We've had veterans go through that programme with cancers that haven't been detected. It's a sham.' Veterans also claimed that there is nowhere in the UKthat can test for DU, as opposed to ordinary uranium. Mr Rusling's association arranges tests in Canada. He said 14 samples out of 30 have so far been positive. Opposition politicians warned that the screening programme could amount to little more than a stunt. Shadow defence secretary Iain Duncan Smith welcomed the statement but claimed it had been 'driven' by Downing Street. Liberal Democrat Menzies Campbell said the Government had done the bare minimum under intense pressure. Eight European countries are already testing their Balkans veterans, most of them more extensively than the UK seems likely to do. The alarm has been fuelled by the deaths from cancer or leukaemia of six Italian soldiers, five Belgians, two Dutch, two Spaniards, a Portuguese and a Czech after tours in the Balkans. Five French soldiers have also contracted leukaemia. The European Commission said yesterday it was setting up a scientific group to investigate possible health risks from DU and the French National Assembly called on the U.S. to open its files on the weapons. But at a meeting of Nato officials in Brussels, Britain and the U.S. blocked an Italian call for a moratorium on the use of DU shells. Even as Mr Spellar made his statement, fresh evidence emerged of serious shortcomings in warnings given to our troops in Kosovo. One soldier posted there last year said he received no information about DU for the first three months and was then told only to keep out of wrecked tanks. But U.S. troops working alongside had maps warning them about buildings and other areas which had been strafed with DU shells. ________________________________________________ Iraq: Diplomat calls for dialogue with Bush administration Text of report by Jordanian newspaper Al-Arab al-Yawm on 10 January A prominent Iraqi diplomat has said that his country is prepared to engage in a dialogue with the new US administration. Nizar Hamdun, undersecretary of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, called on the administration of new US President George Bush Jr.to engage in a dialogue in dealing with Iraq instead of continuing the confrontation policy. In a statement to Al-Arab al-Yawm correspondent, Hamdun called for an end to the siege, which has been imposed on Iraq since 1990, saying that this would be the doorway of the dialogue he calls for. He emphasized that if the new US administration continues the anti-Iraq policy and maintains the siege, this will internationally isolate that administration and place it in a defensive position, because it will be behaving against the international community's will without taking into consideration the positive developments that took place in the Iraqi issue. _________________________________________________ Iraq Demands U.S., British Compensations for Depleted Uranium, BAGHDAD, January 10 (Xinhua)--Iraq on Wednesday demanded compensations from the United States and Britain for the damages caused by their use of depleted uranium shells in their air attacks against Iraq. In a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency, an Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman said Iraq has the right to demand compensations because the depleted uranium has caused harm to the health of Iraqi people and contaminated the environment. The spokesman called on the United Nations and other world organizations to study the impact of the depleted uranium shells in Iraq, so that the world can get acquainted with ``the crimes and genocide committed by the U.S. and Britain against humanity.'' The Iraqi authorities have repeatedly condemned the U.S.-led Western allies for dropping hundreds of tons of depleted uranium shells in the south and other parts of Iraq and causing an environmental disaster. Iraq has blamed the depleted uranium for the sharp increase of cancer patients since the 1991 Gulf War, in which the U.S.-led multinational alliance drove Iraqi occupation troops out of Kuwait. Addressing a cancer conference last March, Abul-Hadi al-Khalili, deputy head of the Iraqi Cancer Board, said Iraq's cancer cases rose from 4,341 in 1991 to 6,158 in 1997. According to Khalili, there are more cancer patients, especially leukemia or blood cancer patients, in southern Iraq because most of the depleted uranium shells were dropped there during the Gulf War. Iraq filed a formal complaint to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1998, reserving the right to demand compensations from the U.S. and Britain for the use of depleted uranium shells during the Gulf War. __________________________________________________ Iraq wants U.N. check on DU impact BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Iraq Wednesday called on the United Nations and other international organizations to conduct studies on the impact of depleted uranium ammunitions used against Iraq and Yugoslavia and said it would seek compensation for the losses and damages inflicted by such weapons. A Foreign Ministry source was quoted by the official Iraqi News Agency as saying that international media revealed NATO forces used ammunition containing depleted uranium in their attacks against Yugoslavia in 1999. A series of studies have been launched in Europe to determine whether soldiers exposed to DU have a higher incident of cancers or other illnesses. The source called on the United Nations and other organizations to conduct new studies on the depleted uranium ammunitions "to inform the public opinion about their impact not only on Iraq and Yugoslavia but the whole humanity." The source said Iraq had the right to demand compensation for the losses and damages caused by the weapons. Several European countries have begun tests on soldiers who served in the Kosovo conflict to determine whether exposure to DU ammunition posed health hazards. Six Italian soldiers, five Belgians, two Dutch nationals, two Spaniards, a Portuguese and a Czech died after tours in the Balkans, and at least four French and five Belgian soldiers are reported to be suffering from leukemia. It was yet to be determined whether exposure to DU played a part in the deaths or illnesses. Iraq claimed the amount of DU used during the 1991 Gulf War was greater than that used in either Bosnia or Kosovo DU is used for armor-piercing ammunition. Although the material gives off relatively low levels of radiation, it can be dangerous if inhaled or if it enters the body through wounds. _________________________________________________ Iraq urges French electric firms to fulfil contracts BAGHDAD, Jan 10 (AFP) - A senior Iraq electricity official on Wednesday urged French firms charged with rebuilding Iraq's electricity sector to fulfil their contracts. Salah Yussif Qazir, head of Iraq's electricity office, also examined "ways of bilateral cooperation, in particular the electricity sector" with Andre Janier, head of French interests in Baghdad, INA said without elaborating. Baghdad was in contact last year with French firm Spie Batignolles to carry out electrical projects. Iraq's electricity installations were battered in the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait and repair work has been hampered by a lack of spare parts due to the sanctions in force since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Electricity is cut six 12 hours a day in Baghdad and twice as long in the provinces. Iraq can import spare parts for the electricity sector under a UN oil-for-food accord which allows Baghdad to export crude in return for food, medicine and other essential goods. Baghdad has repeatedly accused US and British representatives on the sanctions committee -- which has to approve Iraq's foreign contracts -- of using fake pretexts to block its imports. _________________________________________________ Pakistan to send doctors, medicine to Iraq Text of report by Pakistani newspaper Jang on 9 January Islamabad: To express solidarity with the people of Iraq, the Pakistani government is sending a team of twenty-five professionally competent doctors to Iraq on 23 January via a special flight. The special flight carrying the team of doctors will led by Federal Minister for Health Abdul Malik [Kansi], and will land at Baghdad's airport. It has been said that the federal minister is also going to take medicines to Iraq. It should be clear that due to the imposition of UN sanctions on Iraq, no flight has gone to Iraq from Pakistan since the Kuwait-Iraq war. _______________________________________________ MISCELLANY+++++ Important Public Meeting SANCTIONS KILL!! Open meeting against United Natiions' Sanctions Wednesday February 7, 7pm to 9pm Committee Room 10, House of Commons Chair: Tam Dalyell MP. Speakers include: Alice Mahon MP, chair of the Committee for Peace in the Balkans, George Galloway MP, founder of the Mariam Appeal, Richard Byrne, Voices in the Wilderness and Chris Doyle, the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding. Meeting arranged by Labour Action for Peace. Further information from Jim Addington, 00 44 (0)20 8399 2547 ________________________________________________ SUPPORT THE MARIAM APPEAL AND BUY THE VIDEO The film of the epic journey from Big Ben to Baghdad is now available on video (VHS). Laugh, cry, applaud as the courageous voyagers cross continents to bring the anti-sanctions message to the world in a 37-year-old London omnibus. Only £9.99 from the Mariam Appeal, 13a Borough High Street, London SE1 8SE. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
