Subject:   Kosovo DU Testing Soldiers
   Date:    Mon, 1 Jan 2001 11:18:36 +1100
   From:   moonbeam@earthling.net
     To:     nukenet@envirolink.org

BALKANS  SYNDROME ACQUITTAL WITHOUT INVESTIGATION

mainpage
http://www.rense.com/general6/koso.htm

    Thousands Of Kosovo   Peacekeepers To Be Tested    For D.U. Poisoning
               By Christina Lamb - Diplomatic Correspondent and Macer Hall
              http://www.telegraph.co.uk      12-31-00

                  Thousands of European soldiers who served in
                    Nato forces in Kosovo are to be tested for radiation
                    after claims that they developed cancer through
                    exposure to allied munitions.

                    Portugal and Spain will join the Italians, French and
                    Belgians this week in carrying out a systematic
                    review of the health of the troops they sent to the
                    region to discover whether they were exposed to
                    dangerous levels of depleted uranium in ammunition
                    used by American forces.

                    Portugal will also send a mission of military
                    personnel and scientists from the National Atomic
                    Institute to Kosovo to test radiation levels in areas
                    where depleted uranium shells fell.

                    The decision follows an outcry in Portugal over the
                    death from leukaemia of Hugo Paulino, a young
                    Portuguese corporal, three weeks after returning
                    from peacekeeping in Kosovo. The defence ministry
                    refused to release his body to his family for an
                    autopsy and radiation testing, citing "herpes of the
                    brain" as the cause of death. "It was depleted
                    uranium that killed him," insisted his father, Luis, in
                    an interview on Portuguese television.

                    Two Italian soldiers have died of leukaemia since
                    returning from Kosovo and a leaked military
                    document published in La Repubblica last week
                    admitted that Italian soldiers were dying from
                    leukaemia caused by depleted uranium. Another
                    Italian, Rinaldo Colombo, 31, who served as a
                    peacekeeper in Bosnia in 1995, has also died of the
                    disease.

                    Nato said last week that American aircraft fired
                    10,800 depleted uranium shells in Bosnia in
                    1994-95. Research has shown that exposure to
                    depleted uranium causes health problems that may
                    lead to cancer and neurological and immune system
                    defects in addition to damage to the reproductive
                    organs.

                    Politicians in Portugal and Italy have accused Nato
                    of a cover-up and demanded that their governments
                    should think more carefully before participating in
                    future Nato operations. The Portuguese
                    announcement leaves Britain increasingly isolated
                    as one of the few members of the Nato forces not to
                    be carrying out any investigation. The Dutch
                    government is also planning an inquiry.

                    A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said
                    yesterday that it was monitoring the investigations
                    by its Nato allies but had no plans to test its own
                    soldiers. She said: "We do take the welfare of our
                    personnel very seriously and we'll keep an eye on
                    the outcome of any further investigations into
                    depleted uranium."

                    She insisted, however, that there was no cause for
                    concern. "Our medical advice has told us that
                    depleted uranium is no more radioactive than, for
                    example, a household smoke detector. It does have
                    a recognised toxicity but only if ingested into the
                    digestive system, not if it merely comes into contact
                    with the skin."

                    She said that the MoD had carried out a substantial
                    amount of scientific research into the issue following
                    the Gulf war, when weapons tipped or packed with
                    depleted uranium were used extensively for the first
                    time.

                    About 5,000 British ex-servicemen who served in
                    the Gulf war have reported symptoms of the various
                    conditions referred to as Gulf war syndrome and
                    about 3,500 are claiming war pensions, according to
                    figures from the Gulf Veterans Association. More
                    than 500 have died of related illnesses.

                    Campaigners say exposure to depleted uranium is
                    partly to blame. Tests last year by Canadian
                    scientists found that some Gulf veterans had
                    uranium in their blood.

                    The Pentagon originally denied that uranium shells
                    were used in Kosovo but in March Lord Robertson,
                    the Secretary General of Nato, said that 31,000
                    shells containing depleted uranium had been used
                    by American A10 ground attack aircraft in Kosovo.
                    Known as Warthogs, the A10s use uranium bullets
                    for knocking out tanks. The fine, poisonous dust
                    remains in the atmosphere and pollutes water
                    supplies.

                    America was the only allied force to use depleted
                    uranium in its missiles. The United States Defence
                    Department maintains that they carry no greater
                    health risk than conventional weapons.

                    Roger Coghill, an experimental biologist who runs a
                    research centre in Wales, accused the Americans
                    and the MoD of brushing the "biological truth" under
                    the carpet. "One single particle of depleted uranium
                    lodged in the lymph node can devastate the entire
                    immune system," he told a conference in London,
                    adding a warning that there may be thousands more
                    deaths in Kosovo.

                    The United Nations has a team in Kosovo carrying
                    out its own investigation that will report in February.
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Reporter, Banja Luka, Republika Srpska, B-H     March 27, 2001 BALKANS  SYNDROME ACQUITTAL WITHOUT INVESTIGATION   To the question regarding his views about the most recent UN expert reports Dr. Zdrale answers that those experts did not deign to come to the Kasindol hospital, examine the patients and check the data collected by the local medical staff by Zoran Zuza A few weeks ago NATO greeted with relief the reports of the United Nations experts and several independent laboratories in Switzerland regarding the use of depleted uranium ammunition during the military interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. Regardless of contradictory and partly even political qualifications contained in these reports, NATO welcomed the analyses according to which the risk posed by the use of such ammunition for the Alliance soldiers and the local population is "insignificant" and put the whole affair, as expected, in the "closed case" file with the decision to continue to use that type of ammunition in future military actions. In the general trouble caused by the Albanians in the south of Serbia and now in western Macedonia the news about the victims of the Balkans syndrome have disappeared from the news, while absolutely no one remembered to ask the United Nations expert to explain the meaning of formulations such as "from the scientific point of view uncertainty remains" regarding the long-term effects of the depleted uranium ammunition. Perhaps the said experts will use exactly this sentence as cover in some future court cases against those who ordered the use of depleted uranium ammunition in Bosnia and Kosovo, as the most recent data about the number of registered cases of cancer and death rate among Sarajevo Serbs given to Reporter in Kasin Dol hospital, indicate that without doubt a crime against civilian population and soldiers of the Army of Srpska was committed in this region. What is crime: Director of the clinical-hospital center in Serb Sarajevo Dr. Slavko Zdrale presented data that leave one dumbfounded. In that hospital, in the last three years, all together 639 patients with malignant tumors have been registered. Out of them, 211 died in the same period! "We in the hospital tried to find an answer to the question what could cause such an increase in malignant tumors in the population in the last five years, but we failed to prove any causal link with any of the considered possible causes. The only possible cause of these cancers is the depleted uranium ammunition, since almost all the diseased were either present or lived in the territory exposed to NATO bombing. It is important to mention that the number of cancerous diseases has significantly increased in the last three years and that it hasn't dropped in the January and February of this year," says Dr. Zdrale, a surgeon with 25 years of experience. He emphasizes that a large group of specialists from Kasin Dol hospital has prepared two scientific studies about the effects of uranium and plutonium on human health and about malignant diseases in the Sarajevo-Romanija region. Besides horrific statistics, the studies describe "medical rarities", unprecedented in the medical practice. Several patients had double, even triple malignant tumors in different types of tissue, tumors that were independent of each other. "I have never seen such cases in my entire life and all these years of medical work," emphasizes Dr. Zdrale and again stresses that all those patients come from the territory bombed by the depleted uranium ammunition. Chimneys in the ground: Zeljko Samardzic (1967) had cancer of the large intestine removed in December 1999. In February 2000 he started losing balance and had to resort to a wheel chair. In April 2000 a malignant tumor size of an apple was removed from his adrenal gland. In may 2000, fingers of his left hand started to deform. Skin was pealing off, nails fell off, and doctors diagnosed gangrene and amputated the small finger on his left hand. The Samardzic family has been living near Sarajevo for more than a hundred years. They mostly died from natural causes and no one in the family has ever had a malignant tumor. Zaljko's father and mother are in their 70's. He has a wife and three children. He says that before the war he did not have any serious sickness and explains that by the fact that as a forester he spent a lot of time in the wilderness and walked 20 to 30 kilometers daily. He continued with the same work during the war but, depending on the situation, he had to spend some time in the trenches, where he was during the NATO bombardment. "There were about fifteen of us, some 50 to 100 meters from the spot where the bombs hit. At that time we had no idea what sort of weapon that was, and some of us even picked up pieces of shrapnel as souvenirs," says Samardzic and adds that two other soldiers from that unit have already died from cancer - Desimir Divljan and Dorde Jokic. Jovan Jeftic (1930), whose house was near the bombed spot, also recently died form cancer. Now, after everything he's been through, Samardzic feels well. He realizes that he is a victim of the "Balkans Syndrome", and when he read the story about Sladjana Sarenac, the girl from Hadzici who played with the soil on the edges of a crater made by a depleted uranium bomb, whose nails also fell off, he recalled that he and his comrades dug soil in craters with their bare hands. Provocation from Brussels: As a striking example of the effect of the "Balkans Syndrome", in early March Samardzic traveled to Brussels together with two doctors from Srpska. They were invited to a gathering dedicated to the victims of the depleted uranium ammunition by a Belgian non-governmental organization led by a pacifist and publicist Michel Colon. Dr. Dragutin Ilic and Dr. Trifko Guzina, as well as Snezana Pavlovic from the [Nuclear Physics] Institute in Vinca [near Belgrade] were also in Brussels. "There were invited experts and victims of the 'Balkans syndrome' at the gathering, but there were no NATO representatives. As far as I understood, Colon and his organization are not exactly favorites of the Alliance officials. Besides me there were sick soldiers from different countries, an Englishman who was in the Gulf War, a Frenchman and two Belgians who served in Bosnia-Hercegovina and a journalist from Spain whose fiance died from cancer. During the gathering they said that NATO is making sure that they have all sorts of assistance and that their families are taken care of, but on the condition that they keep quiet. According to what they said, if any member of the family publicly complains or files a suit for damages, they immediately lose all their benefits. That is how NATO is trying to suppress the information about the 'Balkans syndrome'," says Samardzic. He adds that already on the first day of the gathering a German journalist, whose name he does not recall, tried to provoke him by asking him whether the Serb Army used depleted uranium in Srebrenica during, as she said, genocide of Muslims. "A similar commentary came at the end of an article of an Independent, London, journalist who interviewed me and who wrote that it should be kept in mind that I was a member of an aggressor army that carried out genocide in Srebrenica. All of that upset me immensely and I decided to stop giving statements for newspapers. I have never seen Srebrenica, except on a map, in my whole life. My comrades from the unit and I defended our houses and land." "NATO keeps denying the existence of the 'Balkans syndrome'. It should be proven what they did here, and thereby the use of such ammunition elsewhere in the world should be prevented." Dr. Trifko Guzina, a pre-war director of the kidney disease clinic in Sarajevo and a surgeon who operated on 25,000 patients before the war, also claims that Samardzija is a victim of the depleted uranium ammunition. "Such cases are simply unknown in medical literature; that patient is overwhelmed by illness in such a manner, in good health and without a hereditary factor..." He warns that one of the conclusions of the gathering was that decontamination of the soil and water should be urgently carried out in this region because, as Dr. Guzina stresses, everyone is in danger, including the inhabitants of the Sarajevo canton. The Association for the Prevention of Use of Depleted Uranium in War has also been founded and immediately demanded that investigation of the effects of that matter on human body be unified. To the question regarding his views about the most recent UN expert reports Dr. Zdrale answers that those experts did not deign to come to Kasin Dol hospital, examine the patients and check the data collected by the local medical staff. Dr. Nemanja Veljkov, specialist for diseases of blood and liver, facing in the Kasin Dol hospital numerous cases of acute leukemia, especially among children, at a press conference a month ago said that the truth about the "Balkans syndrome" is hidden exactly in that hospital and in the territory of Serb Sarajevo. All those who for whatever reason are now trying to suppress that truth should be reminded that crimes do not disappear, and when justice catches up with the culprits, someone will also remember their accomplices. Data about number of malignant cancers in Kasindol Hospital 1995 - 43 patients - 22 died 1996 - 93 patients - 36 died 1997 - 95 patients - 37 died 1998 - 175 patients - 94 died 1999 - 216 patients - 44 died 2000 - 240 patients - 73 died Leukemia Between 1996 and 2000 there were 18 deaths caused by acute leukemia in Kasindol hospital. The illness was not picky so that the dead include a four-year-old boy, a girl aged 15, a boy aged 16 and a young male aged 23. Since 1998 another 40 patients with illnesses of blood and lymph nodes have been treated in the hospital. 19 of them suffer from leukemia, two from its acute form. The latter two are children from Pale, aged eight and eleven.