Brussels / Lisbon / Rome, 04/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - Speaking to the High Representative for Cfsp, Javier Solana, the members of the Bonino list in the European Parliament raised the problem of the death through leukemia or cancer of several European military personnel who serviced in former Yugoslavia over the past few years, deaths that may have been caused by the use of weapons containing depleted uranium in NATO-led operations in the Balkans.
At the end of last year, Belgian Foreign Minister Andre Flehaut had already asked his Swedish counterpart to tackle this problem, that, in particular, affects Belgian, Italian and Dutch, and which has over the past weeks led to a series of stricter controls among German, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers (see EUROPE of 30 December, p.4). Tuesday evening, Portuguese Defence Minister Julio Castro Caldas said that he had proposed a meeting between NATO countries to exchange information on this affair, and, on Wednesday, at a joint press conference in Lisbon, Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel and Portugal's Jaime Gama backed the initiative. In an interview with La Repubblica, Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, for his part, said that he had instructed Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini to ask NATO to carry out all necessary "checks", and the same evening, the Farnesina (Foreign Office) announced that the NATO's Political Committee would be broaching the problem next week, Tuesday 9 January, and the North Atlantic Council on 10 January. At NATO, the Alliance's military authorities said that the risk to health caused by the presence of uranium in weapons used in its operations were practically zero.
The Italian Radicals in the EP, "without in any way wanting to place into question the need for intervention in Kosovo", asked Javier Solana whether he could provide explanations "as to the reasons that led the armed forces of countries members of the Union to use weapons containing depleted uranium". Do not the EU Council and the High Representative for the common foreign and security policy consider, the MEPs wonder, that, on the contrary, there should be an immediate moratorium on the use of weapons containing depleted uranium, given "such a strong suspicion of the causal link between the spread of the aforementioned illnesses and such weapons" (This issue could be added to the agenda for the EU's session on 15 January).
The European Commission shares the concerns of the Member States concerned and is in contact with them, a Commission spokesman said on Thursday in answer to questions from the press. The Commission is examining the means at its disposal to contribute in clarifying this affair as quickly as possible, he added, while noting that one instrument that could be used was the Euratom Directive on fundamental standards for protection against radiation (there is however the problem of implementing this directive on a territory outside the EU - in this case Bosnia and Kosovo).
The Ansa press agency, moreover, reports that, in a radio broadcast on "radioanch'io", Romano Prodi said that, as President of the Commission, he was immediately going to contact the governments of Bosnia and Serbia "to speak with them of the pollution and problems linked to depleted uranium". Responsibility towards the Balkans "is ours, is European", and not that of the United States, he added. He then said that "if there is a risk, however slight, such weapons must be abolished".