BRUSSELS, Jan. 9 -- -- The United States and Britain rejected calls by other NATO allies today to suspend use of depleted-uranium munitions as controversy swelled within the 19-member alliance over whether the weapons pose serious health risks to peacekeeping forces in the Balkans.
But the United States and Britain, citing the World Health Organization and other experts, countered that there is no medical evidence showing a clear link between depleted-uranium weapons and health problems. They said the weapons play an important role in allied military forces and should remain in the arsenal.
"There's absolutely no proof that there's a connection," said U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.
The furor over the depleted-uranium issue illustrates a growing estrangement between the United States and its European allies on several fronts at a time when NATO faces a variety of difficult decisions over its future as the world's dominant military alliance.
As the Bush administration prepares to take office, NATO diplomats point to looming transatlantic conflicts. The incoming administration is leaning toward building a national missile defense and reassessing the U.S. role in peacekeeping in the Balkans, plans that put it at odds with European views. Bush officials also are suspicious of plans for a joint European military force, and they disagree with Europe over some aspects of NATO's future enlargement toward Russia's borders.
"It was already going to be very hard to maintain unity within NATO in dealing with all of these matters that go to the core of the alliance's future," said a senior European diplomat. "The depleted-uranium problem could not have come at a worse time because it damages the sense of trust that has kept the alliance strong."
The controversy arose after Italy, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands reported a spate of cancer cases among veterans who had returned from Balkan peacekeeping duties. Other soldiers complained of symptoms including chronic fatigue and hair loss, reminiscent of the "Gulf War syndrome" suffered by Western soldiers who served in the 1991 campaign to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
Depleted uranium is what is left after uranium is processed to remove most of the radioactivity for use in nuclear fuel and weapons. Military experts say that because of the metal's density, uranium-tipped shells are the best available weapons to penetrate heavy armor.
During the 1999 air war, American jets fired about 31,000 depleted-uranium shells as NATO sought to drive the Yugoslav army out of Kosovo province.
"It's a very effective weapon," said Mark Laity, special adviser to NATO Secretary General George Robertson. "The medical consensus believes it does not pose health problems. It's got less radiation than the normal uranium that can be found in your own back yard."
Defense experts say depleted-uranium munitions could present health risks if the pulverized dust left by an exploding shell was inhaled or ingested in significant quantities.
But specialists at the World Health Organization who have studied the matter say there has been no rise in average levels of leukemia among civilians living in Kosovo.
"Based on our studies and the evidence we have, it is unlikely that soldiers in Kosovo ran a high risk of contracting leukemia from exposure to radiation from depleted uranium," said Michael Repacholi, a WHO researcher.
But those reassurances have done little to contain the political anxiety that has stirred several allied governments to take emergency action. Several NATO ambassadors have asked why, if the threat was so innocuous, did NATO commanders dispatch a warning in June 1999 before the start of the peacekeeping deployment in Kosovo citing a "possible toxic threat" and urging member states to take their own "preventive measures" in dealing with contamination risks.
The memo warned of "residual heavy metal toxicity in armored vehicles" that had been struck by the weapons and said it could pose health risks to people coming into contact with the vehicles.
"The time has come for us no longer to have complete confidence in anyone," said Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Guterres. After a Portuguese soldier who had served in Kosovo died of a mysterious brain disease and another contracted leukemia, Guterres dispatched three cabinet ministers to Kosovo to conduct their own inquiry.
Italy has demanded a full accounting of where depleted-uranium shells were fired in order to ascertain which areas might pose the gravest health dangers to its soldiers. Italian soldiers have been deployed in a sector of southern Kosovo where NATO warplanes fired a vast number of uranium-tipped shells at clusters of Yugoslav tanks and armored personnel carriers in the last stages of the air war.
Meanwhile, Italian Defense Minister Sergio Mattarella said he would continue to press for removing such weapons from the alliance's arsenal until they were deemed safe -- to the satisfaction of all NATO members.
Britain announced today that it would provide voluntary medical checks for all Balkan veterans, joining other European allies that have ordered radiation screening and other health tests for their troops.
Portuguese and Italian troops measure radiation levels on a Yugoslav tank destroyed during the NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999.A NATO soldier carries radiation-measuring equipment to gauge possible risks at sites struck by depleted-uranium munitions.
