Last November, when stories first appeared in the European press of deaths from leukemia among Italian soldiers who had served in the Balkans, alarm bells started ringing across the Continent. The leukemia was--and still is--believed by many independent experts to be caused by radiation from depleted uranium (DU) arms used in the Balkans during the war. Since most European countries are members of NATO, most of them have troops stationed in or near areas believed to be contaminated.

In France, the February 2000 broadcast of a documentary about DU triggered a steadily increasing demand for more and better information. At the same time, reports were surfacing in Belgium of illness among that country's troops stationed in the Balkans. Early this year, Spain and Greece announced they will screen their soldiers for contamination, and Portugal has decided to remove its troops entirely from Kosovo.

Country after country summoned US ambassadors or dispatched delegations to NATO headquarters in Brussels in search of more information about DU. But NATO--which in effect means the United States--has stuck to the Pentagon's oft-repeated refrain: If there is a problem, soldiers' health should certainly be studied, but it is impossible that DU is involved because its radiation is so low as to be utterly harmless.

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