Euro force to be armed with uranium weapons

Date: 11/01/01

By Simon Taylor

THE EU's Rapid Reaction Force will be armed with depleted-uranium weapons despite calls for a temporary ban on the ammunition because of a suspected link to increased cancer rates among soldiers who served in the Balkans.

The UK has promised to equip the Union's 60,000-strong crisis management force with Challenger tanks and Sea Harrier combat aircraft armed with uranium-tipped munitions. Defence experts say the ongoing dispute among NATO and EU members about the safety of the ammunition will force the Union to decide whether it wants to accept the military alliance's policy of continuing to use the controversial weaponry.

"The EU will have access to NATO assets and NATO assets are depleted-uranium," said Sharon Riggle, an analyst with the Centre for European Security and Disarmament.

The row over the use of depleted-uranium (DU) weapons has provoked a major storm, with Germany and Italy demanding a moratorium on the armour-piercing shells until results of extensive investigations into their possible health risks for soldiers and civilians are known. NATO ambassadors agreed to set up a working group to examine the evidence but decided to keep DU shells as part of the alliance's arsenal for the time being.

MEPs have also weighed into the debate, summoning EU foreign policy chief and former NATO secretary-general Javier Solana to appear before the Parliament in Strasbourg next week to explain the alliance's use of uranium in the Balkans.

Heidi Hautala, leader of the Greens in the assembly, said her group would seek an investigation into the effects of DU shells in Bosnia and Kosovo. "We will call for a committee of inquiry if no one else does because there is a question of what depleted-uranium does to civilians and soldiers."

The European Commission has also set up a special committee of nuclear safety experts to investigate the health risks to EU staff and civilians from discarded DU shells in the Balkans.

Defence experts say the EU's reaction force needs anti-tank munitions to be able to handle a range of crisis management situations. One of the scenarios which it is likely to deal with is forces separation - the breaking up of warring factions. Military conflicts in the Horn of Africa, Bosnia and Serbia have shown that the Union will require weapons capable of destroying enemy tanks which pose a threat to EU soldiers.

The UK has promised the force, due to become operational in 2003, one armoured brigade which would include DU-equipped Challenger 2 tanks and 72 combat aircraft including Sea Harrier jets that can be equipped with uranium-tipped anti-tank missiles.

EU defence ministry officials have already discussed the implications of using these munitions in the first meeting of the Union's political and security committee under the Swedish presidency. Anders Bjurner, Stockholm's ambassador on the committee, said this week the EU would have to decide which arms it would use for crisis management operations. "It is up to the EU to choose what kind of weapons will be used," he said.

Hautala said the lack of information about the controversial ammunition illustrated the need for greater transparency over the EU's new security and defence policy. "This is a text book example of what we have been saying about these issues being dealt with behind closed doors," she said. "These are precisely the kind of things that should not be kept from the public."

The EU's Rapid Reaction Force will be armed with depleted-uranium weapons despite calls for a temporary ban on the ammunition because of a suspected link to increased cancer rates among soldiers who served in the Balkans.