[Via the bioregional listserve. The specific nature of some of the
humanitarian ordnance being sent by NATO. ]

http://207.12.87.1/nucwas
te/news/scother1.htm
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NATO using depleted uranium weapons

Sunday Herald
Glasgow, Scotland

By Felicity Arbuthnot and Darran Gardner
April 4 1999

Deadly depleted uranium weapons, blamed for spiralling numbers of
cancers and
birth defects in Iraq, are being used by NATO forces in Yugoslavia.

Both Tomahawk Cruise missiles and munition rounds used by American
Warthog
bombers contain the radioactive waste material. While British forces
launched
their first cruise missiles from the submarine HMS Splendid this
weekend,
American forces have already fired more than 100 at targets across
Yugoslavia.

The weapons, first used in the Gulf War in 1991, require depleted
uranium
(DU) for their armour piercing coating. The DU is imported under licence
from
America and manufactured into tank-busting shells by Royal Ordnance in
the
English Midlands, before being shipped to storage in South Wales and at
Chapelcross in Dumfriesshire.

DU shells have been linked to Gulf War Syndrome, which is thought to be
responsible for the deaths of more than 400 UK war veterans. DU
munitions are
currently listed by the UN as weapons of mass destruction.

Dan Fahy of the US Military Toxics Projects, an American environmental
pressure group, told the Sunday Herald: "The Tomahawk cruise missiles
now
being used in the Balkans, and those used during Desert Storm as well as
those used against Iraq in 1996 and December 1998, contain depleted
uranium
in their tips to provide weight and stability.

"When they impact a target or other hard surface, the area can be
contaminated by uranium. "

Fahy warned that further contamination could occur if European and US
forces
launched a ground war against the Serbian forces of President Slobodan
Milosevic. "If tanks go in, there will be further spread of DU."

According to Chris Helman, a senior analyst for the Centre of Defence
Information in Washington, it would be "an aberration" for American
Warthogs
not to use DU munitions.

The lethal nature of exposure to DU has been well documented since the
war in
Iraq. A report sent by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to the
British government in 1990, warned that if the 50 tonnes of residual
uranium
dust was left in the Gulf area there would be more than half a million
extra
cancers by the end of the century. Up to 900 tonnes was left throughout
Iraq
and Kuwait.

In Scotland, DU has already been linked to a leukaemia cluster around
the MoD
firing range at Dundrennan, near the Solway Firth. Communities close to
the
range, where 7,000 shells have been tested since 1983, show the highest
rate
of childhood leukaemia in the UK.

After the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) recently found
radioactive contamination on the site, people living near the range have
been
increasingly anxious about the long-term health implications. Backed by
their
MP Alisdair Morgan, they have called for an independent health and
environmental study to be carried out.

Despite the information provided by Fahy and Helman, a spokesman for the
Ministry of Defence dismissed as "nonsense" the claim that British and
American Tomahawks contained DU.

Major Rick Jones, spokesman for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in
Europe,
said: "We don't comment on any ordnance." Both Nato and the Pentagon
refused
to comment.

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