Depleted Uranium: UN addresses issue

In a message to the international community on the occasion of the International day for Preventing the Exp+loitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan specifically referred to Depleted Uranium yesterday, stating that it was damaging to the environment.

It will be remembered that US military aircraft deployed tonnes of weapons coated or tipped with depleted uranium in southern Iraq and in Yugoslavia during conflicts in the 1990s. Systematic claims by the Iraqi Health Authorities, published in Pravda.Ru, were scorned or ignored and constant complaints by the Yugoslav authorities concerning alarmingly high clusters of cancerous diseases among civilians living near areas in which DU weaponry was deployed, were investigated – but met wqith systematic denial by the Pentagon and by NATO.

In his speech, Kofi Annan stated that “While environmental damage is a common consequence of war, it should never be a deliberate aim…although international conventions govern nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, new technologies, such as depleted uranium ammunition, threaten the environment”.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru