The Committee for National Solidarity
Tolstojeva 34, Belgrade, YU
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA,
Yugoslavia, Jan 11 (AFP) - The director of
the main hospital in the
northern, Serb-majority part of Kosovo, on
Thursday blamed depleted
uranium NATO munitions for what he said was
a huge increase in cancer
cases in his region.
Milan Ivanovic, himself a Kosovo Serb,
told AFP that cancer
cases referred to the Serb hospital in Kosovksa
Mitrovica had shot
up by 200 percent since NATO's 1999 air campaign
against
Yugoslavia.
"I think the main reason for the
sizable increase in cancer
cases, which numbered 160 last year,
could only be due to NATO's
bombardment with depleted uranium (DU),"
Ivanovic said at the
hospital.
"I think the figure will
go up still further, with many cases
not yet diagnosed," he added,
explaining that the elderly were worst
affected but that there had been an
"abnormal" increase in cases
among men of military age.
He offered no scientific evidence to support his statement,
however.
On Wednesday Marko Jaksic, leader of the Democratic Party
of
Serbia and a senior ally of President Vojislav Kostunica of
Yugoslavia in the breakaway province of Kosovo, told the news agency
Beta that army reservists had been struck with DU-related cancers.
Ivanovic said that four cases of throat cancer had come from
a
single village sited near a television transmitter targeted by
NATO
jets during the bombardments.
"40 percent of my
patients come from areas which were bombarded
by depleted uranium,"
he said.
Ivanovic also claimed that there had been an
increase in the
amount of babies born dead, prematurely or
deformed.
Mrs Jela Jovanovic, art historian
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