DEPLETED URANIUM COVER UP BY UNITED NATIONS LE MONDE DIPLOMA...

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UN-BACKED COVER UP
Deafening silence on depleted uranium
Article on DU from the February
Le Monde Diplomatique

More articles about Depleted Uranium

Subject: [du-list] English translation of the February 2001 Monde diplomatique article
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 09:46:06
From: "robert james parsons" <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Le Monde diplomatique
-----------------------------------------------------
February 2001
UN-BACKED COVER UP
Deafening silence on depleted uranium
_________________________________________________________________

In spite of the growing number of unexplained deaths and illnesses

among servicemen returning from the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo, UN
agencies have, to different degrees, cast a veil of silence over the
chemical and radiological hazards of depleted uranium. It was not
until this January that the World Health Organisation proposed a study
of DU's effects on the peoples of the Gulf region.
by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS *
_________________________________________________________________

The World Health Organisation's report on depleted uranium (DU) has

still not materialised; since being announced, it was postponed
several times and only put back on the agenda because of pressure
from international aid agencies working in Koso! vo. When news of
"Balkan syndrome" first broke, the WHO published in January this
year a four-page "fact sheet" that claimed to deal with the subject
(1). Designed to calm the storm and reassure the public, the
information it contains is vague and often at odds with current
scientific knowledge. If there is any radiation, the fact sheet
claims, it is within acceptable levels: "From the science it
appears unlikely that an increased leukaemia risk related to DU
exposure would be detectable among military personnel in the
Balkans."

How could the WHO, the world's highest authority in health matters,
have produced such a document? It recommends as "reasonable", f! or
example, such unlikely "clean-up operations" as collecting the
thousands of billions of invisible radioactive particles scattered
over hundreds of square kilometres and mixed with hundreds of
thousands of tons of earth.

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In fact, an agreement entered into with the International Atomic

Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1959 prevents the WHO from dealing with
radiation and public health matters without the former's approval.
Approval that is hardly ever given.

In the 1950s in the United States the Eisenhower administration

made much of the civilian spin-offs from military research in order
to justify the enormous sums being spent on the nuclear arsenal. In
1954 it started the Atoms for Peace programme, promising the public
electricity that was not only "clean" but so abundant as to be
"unmeterable".

At the time many members of the scientific community, with little

or no involvement in military research, recalled the work that had
earned Herman Joseph Muller a Nobel prize in 1946. He had
discovered the terrifying mutagenic effects of ionising radiation.
It was this very radiation that the power plants envisaged by Atoms
for Peace were to introduce into the heart of the civilian
population. Yet Dr John W Gofman, who led the team that isolated
the first milligram of plutonium in 1942, continued to hammer home
his point that "by any reasonable standard of biomedical proof,
there is no safe dose" (2). In spite of such warnings the US
pressed for the formation in 1956 of the IAEA - a UN organisation
whose remit is quite simply to promote the nuclear industry.

In 1957 the WHO organised an international conference on the

effects of radiation on genetic mutation; its basic premises,
derived from Muller's experiments, are found in the papers
presented to the conference and subsequently published (3). But in
1959 the debate was closed. The WHO accepted the agreement with the
IAEA according to which "whenever either organisation proposes to
initiate a programme or activity on a sub! ject in which the other
organisation has or may have a substantial interest, the first
party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter
by mutual agreement" (4). That "mutual agreement" stipulation was
to allow the IAEA to block almost every WHO initiative concerning
the relationship between radiation and public health.

That is why, when the WHO proposed publishing a fact sheet on

depleted uranium, nothing came of it. The generic study, still
awaited, was to be confined to chemical contamination from DU as a
heavy metal. Only when DU hit the international headlines did the
WHO announce that the study would be extended to radiation. The
addit! ional work would be done by experts from such bodies as the
United Kingdom's National Radiological Protection Board (much
criticised by British veterans suffering from Gulf War syndrome)
and, of course, the IAEA. The humanitarian aid organisations
working in Kosovo, such as the High Commission for Refugees (HCR),
the World Food Programme, the United Nations Department of
Humanitarian Affairs and the International Organisation for
Migration, have to refer to the WHO for all public health matters

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since they belong to the UN system. So they are still waiting.

The current standards for the "tolerable" radiation dose presenting

no danger to the human organism were set on the basis of studies! by
the Pentagon's Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission on survivors of the
atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima; one of the major
objectives of those studies, if not the main one, was to determine
the bomb's effectiveness as a weapon of war. The studies (details
of which were not published until 1965) began in 1950, when many
victims who had initially survived had already died from the
consequences of the bombings. The group studied consisted mainly of
young sportsmen in relatively good shape. Those particularly
vulnerable to the harmful effects of radiation - children, women
and the elderly - did not appear at all.

These studies of survivors were soon! brought to an end: there was

no waiting for the cancers that would take decades to appear. They
were also carried out by physicists with no training in biology. At
the time they knew nothing of the existence of DNA, let alone how
it works, and they made no distinction between the effects of a
single, sudden, intense explosion and those of radiation from an
internal, slow, constant source - like that given off by particles
of depleted uranium which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion
or through open wounds.

The nuclear lobby has always claimed that the effects of low-level
radiation are too small to be studied. They therefore extrapolated
from the observ! ed effects of high dose irradiation (Hiroshima and
Nagasaki), on the basis that if 1,000 survivors became ill after
exposure to a dose of 100 (an arbitrary figure), 500 would be ill
when exposed to 50 and only one from a dose of 0.5. Thus, below
that exposure no-one is affected (5).

'Safe' doses

But the British researcher Alice Steward showed the danger of

low-level radiation to the human organism in a study of children
whose mothers were x-rayed during pregnancy. In the 1970s she
reached the same findings for employees of the nuclear weapons
plant in Hanford, US. In 1998, still going strong despite her 91
years, she published with George W. Kneale an in-depth reappraisal
of the studies made of the 1945 survivors, showing irrefutably the
errors present in the work on which the present standards are based
(6). But it is these standards that allow the WHO fact sheet to
speak of a "tolerable daily intake" for persons exposed to depleted
uranium. Likewise, Dr Chris Busby, a British researcher who has
written a number of works on the effects of low-level radiation (7)
(disputed by the nuclear establishment), has explained how chronic
internal low-level radiation systematically destroys the DNA of
cells to produce the mutations that lead to cancer.

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The international standards have been revised downwards several

tim! es, most recently in 1965, 1986 and 1990, by the International
Commission for Radiation Protection - which draws up the standards
that are then applied by the IAEA. The 1990 revision cut the
permitted dose by a factor of five. The US has still not accepted
that revision. It is therefore on the basis of doses five times
higher than accepted by the rest of the world that they claim their
soldiers received "safe" doses during the Gulf war.

The highest authority in the matter in the US is the Atomic Energy

Commission (AEC), a civilian agency but in fact headed up by the
military high command, which in that way controls the development
of all nuclear technology. All the main sources of ionis! ing
radiation are therefore controlled by persons and institutions with
no interest in exploring their dangers. The four most eminent
scientific authorities to have worked for the AEC were John Gofman,
Karl Z Morgan, Thomas Mancuse and Alice Stewart. Each in turn was
sacked for presenting findings showing that exposure to low-level
radiation causes cancer (8). The WHO fact sheet therefore comes in
the context of a history of general denial of which the affair of
depleted uranium in Yugoslavia is only the latest episode.

In May 1999, during the Kosovo war, the UN arranged for

representatives of all the agencies involved in the conflict to go
and make an initi! al assessment of the situation. Each wrote a
report that was then shared with the other agencies. The UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) took part, but its report was
suppressed. After it was leaked, the document, penned by Bakary
Kante, advisor to UNEP director general Klaus Toepfer, was made
public on 18 June 1999 in two Swiss French-language newspapers,
Courrier and Liberté. The report sounded the alarm on the pollution
caused by the bombings, specifically mentioning depleted uranium
(9).

Another report on pollution, funded by the European Commission and

published that same June shortly after the end of the war, takes
the trouble to identify its sources (exp! erts in the field,
literature, specialist monographs, etc.) but makes virtually no
mention of depleted uranium (10). The only reference appears in a
brief list of the types of pollution: "DU" followed by "in
Yugoslavia - claimed". One might have thought that the working
party had been unaware of the Kante report. But several paragraphs
of its report reproduce it word for word, and the list of 80 or so
shelled sites is identical to that compiled by Kante.

Not long after that, the UNEP set up a working party, the Balkans
Task Force (BTF), to make a full report. Toepfer appointed
Finland's former environment minister Pekka Haavisto to lead it. He
was adamant th! at depleted uranium was part of the overall pollution
picture and could not be left out of the enquiry. If he was barred
from studying it as radioactive pollution, he would study it as

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chemical pollution (see box).

Where are the contaminated sites?

On completion, it was announced that the BTF report (11) would be

released in Geneva on 8 October 1999. A journalist who went to the
UNEP's Geneva office, where the BTF is based, expecting to obtain a
copy, was received by Toepfer's spokesman and right hand man Robert
Bisset, who refused him any contact with Haavisto's team.
Eventually, he was told there had been a change of plan and that
Haavisto would be giv! ing a press conference on 11 October in New
York. Since the journalists who were closely following the issue of
depleted uranium in Kosovo were all based in Geneva, they were thus
denied any possibility of interviewing the man who had written the
report.

Reworked by Bisset, the final part of the report was cut from 72
pages to two (later, the missing parts were posted on the UNEP's
internet site) (12). Its findings and recommendations spoke of
cordoning off contaminated sites - while saying simultaneously that
they could not be identified. The Canadian expert Rosalie Bertell
had advised the BTF to take samples from the air filters of
vehicles in Kosovo, from! armoured tanks that had been struck and
from sites likely to have been affected by DU weapons; but no such
samples were taken while the teams were in the field.

Throughout this time a whole procession of people directly involved

in the question came to Geneva. The HCR's special envoy to the
Balkans, Dennis McNamara, spoke of refugees returning to a "secure
environment". But by "secure" he meant "militarily secure",
stressing at a press conference at the Palais des Nations on 12
July last year Nato's assurances that depleted uranium posed no
problems. US under-secretary of state for population, refugees and
migration Julia Taft came to Geneva to boast to the UN Economic and
Social Council of the success of this "humanitarian war"; she
admitted during another press conference (Palais des Nations, 14
July 1999) that she did not know what depleted uranium was.

IAEA spokesman David Kyd claimed in an interview that his agency's

mandate did not allow it to investigate DU, saying that it was, in
any case, perfectly harmless. Dr Keith Baverstock of the WHO
regional office for Europe came out with the same weasel words
about there being absolutely no danger, though he added that
depleted uranium could cause problems in a battle situation.
Finally, former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, now the UN
Secretary General's special envoy to the Balkans,! abruptly stated
that depleted uranium was a "non-issue".

Last March the Military Toxics Project, an American anti-nuclear

NGO, announced that Nato had, that January, sent the UNEP a map of
targets affected by depleted uranium in Kosovo; and this was

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confirmed by a source at the Netherlands foreign ministry (13).

Fearing a general outcry, Toepfer convened a crisis meeting in
Geneva on 20 March to decide on a strategy. But he was too late.
Switzerland's last independent French language newspaper, Courrier,
published the map that same morning.

The next day Haavisto held a press conference. Although he tried to

be reassuring, he referred to the recommendati! ons of the October
report - that contaminated sites should be cordoned off - while
adding that the map available was not accurate enough to identify
them. A press release referred to the WHO study that was still
being prepared and another commissioned by the BTF from the UK's
Royal Society (that has not been heard of since).

The map, purportedly showing the 28 sites affected by 30 mm

anti-tank Penetrator missiles launched from A-10 aircraft, raised a
number of questions. The targets were concentrated close to the
Albanian border (areas occupied by Italian and German forces) where
former Yugoslav leader Tito, fearing the irredentism of the then
Albanian dicta! tor Enver Hoxha, had built substantial concrete
military installations underground. According to Swiss military
analyst Jacques Langendorf, who visited the area in Tito's days, 30
mm Penetrators would have little impact on the concrete, but
DU-reinforced Cruise missiles might be effective. And according to
British analyst Dennis Flaherty, one of the aims of the war was to
test such missiles equipped with a new technology (known as Broach)
allowing as many as ten Penetrators to be fired at a time in order
to penetrate underground bunkers more effectively.

Following insistent demands from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,

Nato gave Toepfer a new map in July last year. It showed 112
targets and had a list of the munitions supposedly released there.
For about 20 sites, the type of munitions was given as "unknown",
which seems unlikely given the computer tracking systems available
to Nato and the Pentagon. Apparently the map was kept from Haavisto
until September. When he discovered it, he wanted to send a team of
investigators to Kosovo straight away. Toepfer apparently vetoed
such a move before the 24 October elections, fearing a massive
exodus like the one during the war if worrying findings were made.

Whatever the case may be, tired of waiting for the WHO, the High
Commission for Refugees has drawn up its own instructions for its
staff (14):! no pregnant woman will be sent to Kosovo, anyone
approached about going there must have the option of being posted
elsewhere, and any official sent to Kosovo must have his file
marked "service in the field" to facilitate any claim for
compensation in the event of illness resulting from contamination.
According to Frederick Barton, deputy high commissioner for
refugees, the HCR's efforts to draw the civilian population's
attention to the risks of contamination met with tremendous
resistance both from Albanian politicians and from Nato and Unmik

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(UN Mission in Kosovo) administrators.

For Rosalie Bertell, the "non-issue" of depleted uranium is just

the latest ! episode in a long story that is far from over. Watch
this space.
______________________________________________________________

* Journalist, Geneva

(1) " Fact sheet No. 257, Depleted Uranium ", 12 January 2001,
World Health Organisation (WHO), Geneva.

(2) Taken from his monograph " Radiation Induced Cancer from
Low-Dose Exposure " and quoted in an open letter dated 11 May 1999
signed John W Gofman, MD, PhD.

(3) "Effects of Radiation on Human Heredity: Report of a Study

Group convened by WHO together with Papers Presented by Various
Members of the Group", WHO, Geneva, 1957.

(4) Agreement between the In! ternational Atomic Energy Agency and
the World Health Organisation, approved by the 12th World Health
Assembly on 28 May 1959 in resolution WHA12.40. World Health
Organisation, Basic Documents, 42nd edition, World Health
Organisation, Geneva, 1999.

(5) Rosalie Bertell, " The Hazards of Low Level Radiation",

http://ccnr.org/bertell_book.html.

(6) "A-bomb survivors: factors that may lead to a re-assessment of

the radiation hazard", International Journal of Epidemiology,
Volume XXIX, No. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, pp
708-714.

(7) Including Wings of Death : Nuclear Pollution and Human Health,

Aberystwyth, Green Audit 1995.

(8) Jay M Gould, director, and Benjamin A Goldman, assistant

director, Overview: Deadly Deceit, Low-Level Radiation, High-Level
Coverup, Radiation and Public Health Report, New York, December
1989.

(9) Bakary Kante, Senior Policy Advisor to the Executive Director

of ENUP, "United Nations Inter-Agency Needs Assessment Mission to
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Environment and Human
Settlements Aspects", United Nations, May 1999.

(10) "Assessment of the Environmental Impact of Military Activities

Duri! ng the Yugoslavia Conflict: Preliminary Findings", June 1999,
prepared by the Regional Environmental Centre for Central and

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Eastern Europe, Szentendre, Hungary, for the European Commission

DG-XI - Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection (Contract
No B7-8110/99/61783/MAR/XI.1).

(11) "The Kosovo Conflict: Consequences for the Environment & Human
Settlement", United Nations Environment Programme and United
Nations Centre for Human Settlements, Geneva, 1999.

(12) http://www.grid.unep.ch/btf/pressreleases/unep21032000.html
and http://balkans.unep.ch/du/du.html

(13) See maps on Le Monde diplomatique's site.

(14) File of instructions of the HCR personnel department.

Translated by Malcolm Greenwood

______________________________________________________________

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1997-2001 Le Monde diplomatique

<http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/2001/02/03uranium>

Links :
z Fines Particules d'Uranium Appauvri. Décès « naturel » ou décès suite à accident de
travail ?
z Gulf War Veterans Resource Links - DU LINK
z Campaign Against Depleted Uranium CADU
z Wings of Death + second event theory - Chris Busby
z ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE & HEALTH HAZARDS OF THE NATO
BOMBINGS:
AN ANNOTATED URL REFERENCED LIST OF INTERNET ARTICLES, NEWS,
PRESS RELEASES. [ PART 5 ] [Compiled by Dr. Janet M. Eaton, June 13, 1999 ]

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