For those who have followed the issue since these weapons were first used in the 1991 Gulf War, his assertions were astonishing. Either he has been dramatically misled by his civil servants or, with possible prodding from the special relationship with Washington, he was being extremely economical with the truth.

I visited Iraq 10 months after the war ended. At a press conference an eminent child psychologist described the terrible aftermath of the war, and what I discovered there was even more horrifying than he described. I was determined to tell the world and believed that when this was revealed there would be outrage - but I was wrong.

Since I discovered that depleted uranium weapons had been used, every attempt to find out the truth has been met with a wall of lies. Many of those who have investigated this - and this includes the top experts in the world - have been threatened, shot at and fired from their jobs. I have been receiving death threats for five years now, some of them imaginative, some boring.

When I arrived in Iraq, doctors were already reporting a rise in congenital abnormalities in the newborn and a threefold rise in cancers and leukaemias, especially in children. Birth defects and illness were also affecting Gulf veterans. Their search for answers and treatment has been met with bureaucratic stonewalling and lies. As they have attempted to find answers for themselves and for the sick and dying, their homes have been raided by the Ministry of Defence Police. Computers, disks and documents have been removed.

"Depleted uranium is a É radioactive waste and, as such, should be deposited in a licensed repository," stated the US Army Environmental Policy Institute in June 1995. It does not advise depositing on a school, hospital, radio station or Chinese Embassy.

When I talked to a spokesperson for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell for an article in this paper, he told of the authority's alarm on discovering that these weapons had been used in the Gulf - something it only discovered from brief reports in the media.

So alarmed was the UKAEA that it sent a report to the Ministry of Defence in April 1991, warning of a health and environmental catastrophe. It estimated that there could be more than half a million "potential deaths from cancer" in the Gulf within 10 years.

That the government of the day was aware of the unique contamination was succinctly aired in a rare display of glasnost by armed forces minister Lord Gilbert on March 2, 1998. He referred to the UKAEA document and to a letter written by Mr PGE Bartholomew, business development manager (defence) at UK Atomic Energy Authority Industrial Technology, dated April 30, 1991 - just two months after the Gulf War. The letter reads: "I promised to produce a threat paper on the contamination of Kuwait from depleted uranium used by the US and UK forces in the recent war É [the paper] covers the threat and outlines the action we believe is necessary for health safety.

"The whole subject of the contamination of Kuwait is emotive and thus must be dealt with in a sensitive manner. It is necessary to inform the Kuwait government of the problem in a useful way É" This poisoned chalice, suggests the letter, should be handed to the luckless British Ambassador in Kuwait.

Leonard Dietz, an eminent nuclear expert, received a letter dated August 15, 1991, from the office of the director of defence research and engineering at the department of defence in Washington.

It states: "You posed the question of the probability that lung cancer could develop after the inhalation of depleted uranium. As you are no doubt well aware, since the material is a source of ionising radiation, the potential for carcinogicity is real. The same holds true for nephro-toxicity É protection from which requires a much lower ambient concentration in drinking water or foodstuffs.

"Let me assure you that we feel that your concern, which parallels our own, is real and we thank you for sharing that with us."

In his statement to parliament on Tuesday, Armed Forces Minister John Spellar said there was no rise in kidney ailments or cancers among Gulf veterans. Sean Rusling, chairman of the National Gulf Veterans' and Families' Association, is astonished. "The armed forces minister was being economical with the truth. Many Gulf veterans suffer both cancers and kidney diseases. There has been a systematic cover up by the Ministry of Defence over the deaths of servicemen and women after the Gulf war - 521 to date. Out of 600,000 US troops, 130,000 are sick."

Tragedy, it seems, is now set to afflict troops who have served in the Balkans, with seven Italian peacekeepers already having died of leukaemia. Countries whose service personnel have been deployed there are all engaging in screening programmes, with Britain finally and reluctantly also agreeing to do so.

On the day that ground troops were sent into the Balkans, the Sunday Herald asked the Ministry of Defence whether we were now set to see an epidemic of "Balkans war syndrome" since DU weapons had again been used.

"Absolutely not," said the spokesperson. "The armed forces minister [then Douglas Henderson] has given the strictest instructions that no service personnel must approach anything which might have been hit by DU - and if it were unavoidable they must wear full radiological protective clothing."

Since I started campaigning on this issue, I have often felt like a lone voice. Now that the rest of the world has woken up to the terrible consequences, I feel this is vindication for investigative journalism.

Copyright 2001 Sunday Herald

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