- BRITISH and American coalition
forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and
deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the
munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction.
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- DU contaminates land, causes ill-health and cancers among
the soldiers using the weapons, the armies they target and civilians, leading
to birth defects in children.
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- Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted
uranium project -- a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville
University and onetime US army colonel who was tasked by the US department
of defence with the post-first Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up
-- said use of DU was a 'war crime'.
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- Rokke said: 'There is a moral point to be made here.
This war was about Iraq possessing illegal weapons of mass destruction
-- yet we are using weapons of mass destruction ourselves.' He added: 'Such
double-standards are repellent.'
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- The latest use of DU in the current conflict came on
Friday when an American A10 tankbuster plane fired a DU shell, killing
one British soldier and injuring three others in a 'friendly fire' incident.
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- According to a August 2002 report by the UN subcommission,
laws which are breached by the use of DU shells include: the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide
Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions
of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions
of 1899 and 1907, which expressly forbid employing 'poison or poisoned
weapons' and 'arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary
suffering'. All of these laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted
suffering in armed conflicts.
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- DU has been blamed for the effects of Gulf war syndrome
-- typified by chronic muscle and joint pain, fatigue and memory loss --
among 200,000 US soldiers after the 1991 conflict.
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- It is also cited as the most likely cause of the 'increased
number of birth deformities and cancer in Iraq' following the first Gulf
war.
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- 'Cancer appears to have increased between seven and 10
times and deformities between four and six times,' according to the UN
subcommission.
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- The Pentagon has admitted that 320 metric tons of DU
were left on the battlefield after the first Gulf war, although Russian
military experts say 1000 metric tons is a more accurate figure.
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- In 1991, the Allies fired 944,000 DU rounds or some 2700
tons of DU tipped bombs. A UK Atomic Energy Authority report said that
some 500,000 people would die before the end of this century, due to radioactive
debris left in the desert.
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- The use of DU has also led to birth defects in the children
of Allied veterans and is believed to be the cause of the 'worrying number
of anophthalmos cases -- babies born without eyes' in Iraq. Only one in
50 million births should be anophthalmic, yet one Baghdad hospital had
eight cases in just two years. Seven of the fathers had been exposed to
American DU anti-tank rounds in 1991. There have also been cases of Iraqi
babies born without the crowns of their skulls, a deformity also linked
to DU shelling.
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- A study of Gulf war veterans showed that 67% had children
with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems
and fused fingers.
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- Rokke told the Sunday Herald: 'A nation's military personnel
cannot wilfully contaminate any other nation, cause harm to persons and
the environment and then ignore the consequences of their actions.
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- 'To do so is a crime against humanity.
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- 'We must do what is right for the citizens of the world
-- ban DU.'
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- He called on the US and UK to 'recognise the immoral
consequences of their actions and assume responsibility for medical care
and thorough environmental remediation'.
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- He added: 'We can't just use munitions which leave a
toxic wasteland behind them and kill indiscriminately.
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- 'It is equivalent to a war crime.'
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- Rokke said that coalition troops were currently fighting
in the Gulf without adequate respiratory protection against DU contamination.
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- The Sunday Herald has previously revealed how the Ministry
of Defence had test-fired some 6350 DU rounds into the Solway Firth over
more than a decade, from 1989 to 1999.
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- <http://www.sundayherald.com/32522>http://www.sundayherald.com/32522
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