----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 2:35 AM Subject: DU row may herald wider split on U.S. missile plan [STOPNATO.ORG.UK] STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ANALYSIS-DU row may herald wider split on U.S. missile plan By Douglas Hamilton BRUSSELS, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The depleted uranium row has hit NATO with its biggest credibility challenge since the alliance struck at Yugoslav targets in 1999, but this time there is no major external threat to hold the alliance together. Bereft of a common enemy to enforce consensus, the allies are increasingly airing differences, foreshadowing a potentially far more serious split later this year if the United States goes ahead with its controversial missile defence plan. "NATO has nothing to hide," alliance Secretary-General George Robertson insisted on Wednesday, in a flashback to its battle against charges that the Kosovo war was ill-conceived, badly conducted and inflicted indiscriminate destruction. Stunned by the media reverberation of charges that depleted uranium (DU) shells U.S. strike planes used in the Balkans could cause cancer among European troops, Robertson pledged to inform and reassure the public that such fears were unwarranted. The hope was that by promising full cooperation with fresh investigations, and enlisting the support of United Nations health and environment experts, the furore would die down. But that might depend on the attitude of member governments. Alliance diplomats said some members faced an uphill task against a potent array of anti-nuclear, anti-war, anti-NATO campaigners active in a European electorate whose trust in government and science was badly dented by health scandals over mad cow disease and industrial toxins in the food chain. "You can stack the facts a mile high but there are some people who are never going to be convinced," a diplomat said. MEDIA WHIRLWIND The DU emergency hit the 19-member alliance like a whirlwind last week, quickly ensuring it would dominate Wednesday's first meeting of the North Atlantic Council of the new year. Governments with the most vociferous anti-NATO lobbies demanded and got the alliance's full attention, even while admitting there was no new scientific evidence of major risk. Robertson held a full-dress news conference before the biggest media turnout since the Kosovo war, and U.S. military medical experts in uniform were flown in from Washington to try to damp down the furore with a barrage of established facts. All made a concerted effort to balance public health concerns that no allied government can ignore and the conviction among major NATO allies that DU is a legitimate and necessary weapon whose debris poses no major health hazards. "We are not, and never will be complacent," Robertson said. But there was "no known link" in a multitude of studies between cancers such as leukemia and the very low levels of radiation in the immediate vicinty of spent DU ammunition. He said an Italian-Greek-German call for a moratorium on the use of DU was irrelevant since it was not currently in use. But he also ruled out a suggestion that, whatever its health implications, the DU armour-piercing round had become a political liability in need of a cleaner replacement. "We cannot possibly go on the basis of perceptions or peoples' concerns about that one word - uranium," he said. "We have to base what we are doing on the facts...we must focus more on the facts and less on the emotions." COME BACK, MILOSEVIC Some NATO insiders compared the dissonance created in the alliance by the uranium row -- and the media attention it attracted -- with recent internal squabbling over the creation of a European Rapid Reaction force. The incoming U.S. administration of president-elect George W. Bush is expected to take a somewhat tougher line than its predecessor as tricky negotiations with the EU over sharing NATO assets procede this year towards a hoped-for agreement. The Bush team's conservative security chiefs were unlikely to have been impressed by European suggestions that major American DU-firing weapons such as the A-10 ground attack aircraft and the M1AI Abrahms tank be mothballed. Washington may be counted on to point out, once more, that its airforce had to conduct 85 percent of the Kosovo strikes because the European allies were so poorly equipped. The argument inevitably goes back to the absence of a current military threat to the alliance, a lack of consensus on where tomorrow's threat will come from, and how seriously to address it by means of military spending and development. The DU furore looked like being the precursor to a far more divisive split later this year over the Bush administration's determination to go ahead with a National Missile Defence that European and other opponents have warned could spark a new arms race. The alliance was "better at action than theory," one NATO diplomat remarked recently. "If (Yugoslav ex-president Slobodan) Milosevic were still around, I don't think you'd be seeing so much of this." 12:36 01-10-01 Copyright 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. 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