NATO wages war on Balkans environment
By John
Catalinotto
The Hague, Netherlands
Each day brings more evidence of a new dimension to NATO's
war crimes in Yugoslavia: It is destroying the environment of
the entire Balkans region and the Adriatic Sea.
Fishers in the Adriatic reported May 15 that their nets had
snagged on unexploded bombs. NATO planes had dropped them in
the sea on their way back to bases in Italy after incomplete
bombing runs over Yugoslavia.
The Social Democrat/Green government in Germany came close
to cracking May 13 when a special Green Party congress in
Bielefeld nearly voted to break with the regime's war policy.
Anti-war demonstrators--themselves Green Party members--hit
Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer with a bag of red paint at the
congress.
Fischer, a leader of the "Realo" faction of the Greens, has
broken with the party's pacifist and environmentalist
traditions and become a leading spokesperson trying to justify
NATO's aggressive war against Yugoslavia as a "humanitarian"
intervention. More and more rank-and-file party members see
this position as a complete betrayal of Green principles.
As the truth about NATO's destruction of human life and the
environment emerges, resistance to the war is expected to
spread to new layers of the population in Europe.
Besides the bombs dropped into the sea, people are talking
about NATO's bombing of industrial plants containing dangerous
chemicals and its use of radioactive depleted-uranium
weapons.
On April 15, NATO planes bombed the Serbian petrochemical
complex in Pancevo. The bombs directly hit the vinyl chloride
monomer plant and the ethylene plant. They also damaged other
factories in the complex.
Plant director Dr. Slobodan Tresac reported that fire broke
out and huge quantities of chlorine, ethylene dichloride and
vinyl chloride monomer flowed out of their containers. The
highly toxic fumes released then spread to the entire
region.
Fearing more bomb hits, workers at the plant released tons
of ethylene dichloride, a carcinogen, into the Danube. This
river, now blocked by NATO bombing, is not only an important
commercial and transport passageway--it also provides drinking
water for almost 10 million people.
In a May 7 news release, the Worldwide Fund for Nature
warned that an environmental crisis is looming in the lower
Danube River and the Black Sea, due mainly to oil slicks.
Depleted uranium weapons
In an open letter from Belgrade, Yugoslav Agriculture
Minister Nedelijko Sipovac wrote in early May that NATO's
bombings have caused ecological catastrophe "not only on the
territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia but on the
territories of all Balkan, Danube basin, Mediterranean and
European countries as well."
Sipovac added that areas of Yugoslavia experienced an
increase in radioactivity. Sipovac attributed this to the use
of depleted-uranium-coated shells and bullets.
Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Chuck Wald admitted to the
BBC May 7 that A-10 "Warthog" anti-tank planes used over Kosovo
were firing depleted-uranium ammunition. These planes are
capable of firing 4,200 such rounds a minute. They fired
940,000 30-millimeter shells into Iraq during the 1991 Gulf
War, according to Pentagon reports.
Depleted uranium is a waste created in the process of
enriching uranium for nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.
It is an extremely dense metal. The military uses DU to
increase a shell's ability to penetrate armor.
When DU shells penetrate steel, the DU burns and releases
toxic, radioactive uranium oxide into the air as dust and
smoke. When people inhale and ingest it, this dust becomes a
danger to health and life.
IAC to expose dangers
On May 13, before leaving for a fact-finding mission to
Yugoslavia, International Action Center Co-director Sara
Flounders said one of the trip's major goals would be to
document how NATO is destroying the environment.
"Along with the immediate tragedy of civilian deaths in
Yugoslavia," said Flounders, "NATO bombing is creating
environmental devastation that will affect millions of people
for generations to come.
"This destruction of the environment for all the different
peoples who live in the Balkans exposes the NATO leaders' claim
that their goal in making war on Yugoslavia is humanitarian.
This bombing harms everyone in the region--Albanian and Serb,
Roma and Greek, Croat and Slovene.
"We will bring the truth about this destruction to the
people of the NATO countries and make it impossible for anyone
claiming to be for protecting the environment to at the same
time defend NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia."
Flounders is an editor of "Metal of Dishonor," a book
presenting a collection of technical and political articles
exposing the dangers of depleted uranium. The IAC published a
second edition of the book in early May.
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