A controversy over the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons resurfaced this week after an ailing Italian soldier said he believed his illness stemmed from DU exposure during a service stint in the Balkans.
The 32-year-old soldier from Potenza in southern Italy, who served in Bosnia in 1996, said in an interview with the online agency Peacereporter that he had been given no protection against DU exposure.
"We were on the front line, in close contact with exploded ammunition and ammunition remains.
"Hygiene was scarce - a quick shower was all we had to clean ourselves. We touched everything with our bare hands. Our gas masks were out of date and so it was pointless using them. I used to envy the Americans their equipment," he said.
The soldier, who was not named for legal reasons, is suffering from a serious neurological illness which he says began shortly after his return from the Balkans.
"I gave my youth to the state but all I have received in exchange is indifference," he concluded.
The soldier's illness is being cited by Anavafaf, an association representing the families of sick or dead servicemen, as a case of DU contamination.
Anavafaf said on Monday that two other suspected cases surfaced last week, involving a Red Cross worker and a Carabiniere policeman who had served in the Balkans.
According to Anavafaf, more than 50 Italian soldiers who were deployed in Bosnia or Kosovo have died and a further 200 have fallen ill, mainly from cancer.
The DU issue exploded early in 2001 after Italy, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands reported a spate of cancer cases among soldiers who took part in peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and Bosnia.
During the 1999 Kosovo war, US planes are reported to have fired more than 30,000 rounds of DU ammunition at Serbian targets while in 1995, US bombers fired almost 11,000 rounds of the same type of ammunition in Bosnia.
Fears were fuelled in April 2002 when it emerged that a number of children fathered by Italian Balkan veterans had been born with genetic malformations.
At the height of the DU scare the European Parliament, and Italy too, called for a moratorium on DU ammunition.
But a preliminary 2001 Italian government report said there was no evidence of a link between DU weaponry and the cancer cases encountered in Italian Balkan veterans.
A third and final report commissioned by the Defence Ministry and issued in June 2002 did however admit that there were an "excessive" number of Hodgkin's disease victims among former Balkan peacekeepers.
The report, drawn up by an independent scientific committee, said it had found 12 cases of the lymphoma among former Balkan servicemen where only five would have been expected applying the normal statistics.
Because of its density, DU is put on the tip of shells and bullets which are then more effective and can even pierce armour-plating on tanks.
A DU-tipped weapon goes through the object it strikes before erupting in a burning vapour cloud which then settles as chemically poisonous and radioactive dust.
DU has been a source of controversy for more than 15 years following claims that its contamination of battlefields in Iraq during the 1990 Gulf War caused widespread cancer among Iraqi civilians and contributed to health problems among allied military veterans.
Both the US and Britain acknowledge that DU dust can be dangerous if inhaled but insist the danger is short-lived and localised.
