THE TIMES (London)
THURSDAY JANUARY 18 2001
UN team links DU shells to plutonium
BY MICHAEL EVANS DEFENCE EDITOR JOHN PHILLIPS AND JAMES ROBSON
THE European Parliament called for a moratorium by the United States and Britain on depleted uranium weapons yesterday. The appeal came as a United Nations team said it was examining fragments of DU found in Kosovo for traces of plutonium.
Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, rejected the call and said that British forces would continue to use DU weapons unless there was scientific evidence proving there was a link to cancer-related illnesses.
THURSDAY JANUARY 18 2001
UN team links DU shells to plutonium
BY MICHAEL EVANS DEFENCE EDITOR JOHN PHILLIPS AND JAMES ROBSON
THE European Parliament called for a moratorium by the United States and Britain on depleted uranium weapons yesterday. The appeal came as a United Nations team said it was examining fragments of DU found in Kosovo for traces of plutonium.
Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, rejected the call and said that British forces would continue to use DU weapons unless there was scientific evidence proving there was a link to cancer-related illnesses.
The focus on plutonium followed the discovery by a laboratory working for the UN Environment Programme (Unep) of small amounts of Uranium 236, a more radioactive isotope, in the DU fragments. Pekka Haavisto, chairman of the Unep investigation team, which visited DU sites in Kosovo last year, said: “U-236 is much more radioactive than depleted uranium.”
Traces of U-236 were also found by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, which had also been sent samples from Kosovo. However, Mr Haavisto, a former Finnish Environment Minister, said that the minute traces found would not change the “overall picture of radiological effects”. Nevertheless, the discovery indicated that the DU used in the shells came from uranium that had been reprocessed from nuclear power station fuel and could include elements of plutonium, potentially a far more hazardous material.
President Ciampi of Italy said yesterday that Nato had a duty to prove conclusively that depleted uranium had not caused widespread deaths from leukaemia among peacekeeping troops serving in the Balkans.
The risks to the military and civilians, including the local population, would have to be clarified, he said. His strongly worded speech was delivered to Italian troops serving with the Nato-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo at their headquarters in Pec.
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