The Independent, Jan 25

                 The evidence lies dying in Basra

                            By Robert Fisk in Beirut

                            25 January 2000

                            In IRAQ, there are doctors aplenty who would like to meet
                            the Royal Society's scientists. In the main Basra teaching
                            hospital, the cancer suffererswho live near the fields where
                            depleted uranium shells (DU) were fired by the hundred in
                            1991 queue at the door of the tiny cancer clinic each
                            morning. But will the British scientists meet them?

                            Will they go to Iraq and study the documentation of Basra's
                            leading cancer specialist, Dr Jawad al-Ali, who has maps
                            showing the rate of leukemia growth in the areas where
                            Saddam's tanks were torn apart by DU in the last days of
                            the war?

                            I think not. When Iraq asked the World Health Organisation
                            to investigate DU two years ago, a team of experts arrived
                            to see if such a study was feasible; but no investigation took
                            place. And what about Kosovo? The US used DU rounds in
                            its attacks across the Serb province - and then arrogantly
                            refused to tell UN investigators the location of its attacks.
                            The Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, admitted as much in
                            the Commons last autumn. Why? Why cannot we be told
                            where these rounds were fired?

                            Will the Royal Society's experts visit Kosovo? Will they ask
                            Nato for the information it refused to give to the UN? And
                            what if Nato treats them with the same disdain?

                            They could do worse, for example, than visit the
                            bombed-out paramilitary police barracks in Djakovica,
                            where DU fired by American A-10 aircraft exploded in the
                            very centre of the city. But will they go to other parts of
                            Yugoslavia? Will they visit the areas around Belgrade where
                            DU was also used? Will the British government, indeed,
                            allow them to go there?

                            And what kind of brief is it that tells the scientists they are
                            to "review the available evidence"? If this is to be anything
                            more than a palliative to shut up the Gulf War veterans who
                            suspect they are dying of DU poisoning, these six experts
                            have to find the available evidence lying in the fields of
                            Kosovo and southern Iraq, not just trawl through published
                            reports and military denials. At one of Nato's May press
                            conferences, spokesman James Shea stated that there was
                            no evidence suggesting DU was dangerous, citing a report
                            which turned out to be inaccurate. Is this the sort of stuff the
                            experts will be "reviewing"?

                            For almost two years, Defence Ministry officials have been
                            claiming in letters to MPs that "the Government has not
                            seen any peer-reviewed epidemiological research data" on
                            affected populations, mentioning my own reports in The
                            Independent of deformities, cancers and birth defects in
                            southern Iraq. Is this, then, what this team is meant to do -
                            to provide the Government with some "peer-reviewed" data
                            without any serious on-site inspection? I rather suspect it
                            is.