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Rick Rozoff wrote:
> http://www.tol.cz/look/BRR/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=9&NrIssue=1&NrSection=4&NrArticle=8027
>
> Transitions Online (Open Society Institute)
> December 10, 2002
>
> Balkan Syndrome Resurrected
>
> -During NATO’s 1994 and 1995 bombings of Bosnian Serb
> positions around Sarajevo, NATO aircraft used
> munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly
> radioactive heavy metal that is effective in piercing
> armor. Most of those bombs were fired in Hadzici. In
> one day in October 1995 alone, NATO planes fired 300
> projectiles into the Sarajevo suburb. According to the
> Bosnian government, NATO forces fired some 10,800
> rounds of 30mm armor-piercing projectiles during the
> war.
> -In her report, Jovanovic wrote that since the end of
> the war, 25 percent of wartime Hadzici residents have
> died of various cancers, tumors, and heart attacks. In
> Bratunac alone in the last four years, 500 of the
> 5,000 Hadzici refugees have died. One Hadzici refugee
> dies every three to four days, and every second one
> dies from cancer.
>
> The UN releases a study that lends credence to health
> experts’ cries that NATO’s wartime uranium-tipped
> weapons have left behind a deadly, cancerous legacy.
> by Anes Alic and Dragan Stanimirovic
>
> SARAJEVO and BANJA LUKA, Bosnia and Herzegovina--After
> two years of silence, Balkan Syndrome--better known as
> the depleted uranium affair--is getting its due
> attention. The United Nations Environmental Protection
> Agency (UNEP) in November confirmed the dangerous
> presence of depleted uranium in areas of Bosnia bombed
> by NATO aircraft in 1994 and 1995, which Bosnian
> officials say has led to a shocking increase in
> cancer-related deaths.
>
> UN experts confirmed the discovery of two locations
> containing a high level of radiation from depleted
> uranium from NATO bombings: the Sarajevo suburb of
> Hadzici, where a munitions warehouse and a tank-repair
> facility are located, and a Bosnian Serb army barracks
> in Han-Pijesak, also near Sarajevo. Investigators
> discovered uranium materials and dust inside the
> buildings.
>
> The UNEP task force says that depleted uranium can
> create an increase in uranium concentration 100 times
> the natural levels contained in groundwater.
>
> Upon the release of the November UN expert study on
> depleted uranium, health officials from Republika
> Srpska confirmed that uranium has indeed caused many
> civilian deaths in those two regions. Health officials
> say that civilian deaths in those regions are double
> what they are in other, unaffected regions.
>
> Earlier this year, the Bosnian government invited 17
> international experts to investigate rumors that
> depleted uranium is still present in the environment
> and may be adversely affecting the health not only of
> the local population but also of international
> peacekeepers stationed in Bosnia.
>
> The team of experts investigated 14 separate locations
> over a one-month period, finding traces of radiation
> in three places. Investigators were not able to
> examine eight other locations--four small towns near
> Sarajevo and four others in eastern Bosnia--deemed to
> be too risky due to the presence of land mines.
>
> Pekka Haavisto, who heads the UNEP task force, told
> the daily Oslobodjenje: “We are concerned about the
> situation at the Hadzici tank-repair facility and the
> Han-Pijesak barracks and the health condition of the
> citizens.” Haavisto said that after being analyzed in
> Western European laboratories, the final results would
> be released in March 2003.
>
> Recent years have brought growing concern among
> experts that shrapnel from depleted uranium-tipped
> weapons from could cause cancer or other
> radiation-related problems. According to health
> experts, dust particles from depleted uranium could be
> inhaled, or the substance could leach into the ground
> and the water supply.
>
> AFTEREFFECTS
>
> During NATO’s 1994 and 1995 bombings of Bosnian Serb
> positions around Sarajevo, NATO aircraft used
> munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly
> radioactive heavy metal that is effective in piercing
> armor. Most of those bombs were fired in Hadzici. In
> one day in October 1995 alone, NATO planes fired 300
> projectiles into the Sarajevo suburb. According to the
> Bosnian government, NATO forces fired some 10,800
> rounds of 30mm armor-piercing projectiles during the
> war.
>
> Under the November 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, some
> Sarajevo suburbs held by Serbs during the war came
> under the control of the mostly Bosniak and Bosnian
> Croat federation entity of Bosnia. One of those
> suburbs was Hadzici. Most of the approximately 30,000
> Bosnian Serbs who lived there fled their homes and
> moved as refugees to other parts of the Republika
> Srpska entity of Bosnia and to Yugoslavia.
>
> Some 5,000 civilians from Hadzici fled to Bratunac, in
> eastern Republika Srpska. Medical analysis conducted
> by the local Institute for Health in 1998 showed that
> the mortality of Hadzici refugees was double the
> mortality rate for the rest of Bratunac’s residents.
> The study’s author, Dr. Slavica Jovanovic, told the
> SRNA news agency that she has no doubt that depleted
> uranium is responsible for the increased death rate of
> those people.
>
> “We can say that the mortality rate of the refugee
> population is greater because of high stress, poor
> nutrition, and bad living conditions. But we were
> shocked to discover that deaths among Hadzici’s
> refugees are much more numerous than [among] other
> [refugees],” Jovanovic told SRNA. She blamed those
> deaths on the fact that the refugees from Hadzici were
> exposed to radiation because they lived close to the
> bombed locations.
>
> In her report, Jovanovic wrote that since the end of
> the war, 25 percent of wartime Hadzici residents have
> died of various cancers, tumors, and heart attacks. In
> Bratunac alone in the last four years, 500 of the
> 5,000 Hadzici refugees have died. One Hadzici refugee
> dies every three to four days, and every second one
> dies from cancer.
>
> Jovanovic said that she could not say for sure how
> many Hadzici refugees have cancer because many do not
> check themselves into hospitals since they cannot
> afford medical treatment. The doctor said she is
> hoping that the international community will step in
> and find some way to examine the town’s refugee
> population and help provide treatment.
>
> After the UNEP report was released, the Republika
> Srpska army evacuated soldiers from its barracks in
> Han-Pijesak. Officials say that organized medical
> exams will soon begin for soldiers who were in the
> barracks during the past seven years.
>
> At the same time, medical workers from the federation
> entity are also sending out warnings to people still
> living in Hadzici--but they are expanding their
> warning to the general public, which they fear could
> also be affected by the presence of depleted uranium.
> Federation health officials say they are also worried
> that that radiation has caused an increase in the
> number of diseases such as cancers--especially
> leukemia--tumors, cerebral palsy, and others.
>
> After the reintegration of Hadzici into the federation
> entity, prewar Bosniak and Croat workers began
> cleaning out the munitions warehouse and tank-repair
> facility, removing more than 1,000 truckloads of
> garbage and munitions
>
> Now those workers fear they too have been
> contaminated. Unfortunately, they will have to wait to
> find out. Workers have begun undergoing medical
> examinations, but the results will not be available
> until April 2003. What’s more, despite UNEP warnings
> to immediately evacuate all workers because of danger
> of inhaling depleted uranium dust, some workers from
> Hadzici are still on duty.
>
> “Believe me, I am very afraid. But if I have been
> inhaling radiation for the past seven years, I can do
> it until they publish the final results,” Zijad
> Fazlic, director of the Hadzici tank-repair facility,
> told TOL on November 24. “All we can do now is to wait
> for the results. I don’t know what we are going to do,
> but if I had known this, I would never have come here
> to work. Families of workers also live here,” he said.
>
> Soon after the UNEP report was published, federation
> medical officials started to speculate that it is
> possible that depleted uranium is the cause for the
> shocking jump in cases of leukemia in children.
>
> “It has not yet been proven, but we cannot see
> anything else except uranium,” Edo Hasanbegovic,
> director of the ontological department in Sarajevo’s
> Kosevo clinic, told the daily Oslobodjenje on 21
> November.
>
> Hasanbegovic said that research is set to begin soon
> to find out whether a connection can be made between
> the increase in diseases and depleted uranium. But he
> said he is certain that depleted uranium is one of the
> elements that causes leukemia in Bosnia. “That we can
> claim without medical research. Every year we have a
> 50 percent to 70 percent increase in the number of new
> underage patients,” said Hasanbegovic.
>
> PLAYING CATCH-UP
>
> Lejla Saracevic, chief of radiobiology at Sarajevo
> University, told TOL on 29 November that before the
> depleted uranium affair was made known to the public,
> local experts had asked the government to allow them
> to conduct research in potentially contaminated areas.
> The government, however, refused, saying there was
> insufficient money in the budget for such
> research--research Saracevic said costs little.
>
> Saracevic said that once the most critical locations
> have been decontaminated, it is necessary to find out
> how much of the rest of the region is radioactive. “It
> has been a long time. In seven years the uranium has
> migrated into the ground and through the water. It is
> very possible that it now exists in our vegetation and
> possibly in our food. Our priority is to check that
> now,” she said.
>
> Before the war in Bosnia, the annual number of new
> cases of children with leukemia was never greater than
> 13. Since the end of the war, that number has grown
> every year: Last year it was 26. The situation is the
> same with other cancers: Every year the number grows.
> And almost 80 percent of those new cases are coming
> from areas that were exposed to the radiation of
> depleted uranium--areas that were bombed during the
> war.
>
> The so-called Balkan Syndrome affair first aroused
> attention in early 2001, when Italian media published
> reports that one Italian soldier who had served in
> Bosnia had died of leukemia and that five more were
> very ill. The Italian media blamed the sicknesses on
> NATO’s use of depleted uranium in its weapons.
>
> At the time, all governments denied that NATO was
> using uranium-tipped munitions. Nonetheless, medical
> examinations of soldiers were promptly begun, with
> many being diagnosed with leukemia and other forms of
> cancer.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Anes Alic is TOL’s correspondent in Sarajevo. Dragan
> Stanimirovic is TOL’s correspondent in Banja Luka.
>
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