[CPEO-MEF] MUNITIONS: "It’s Time to Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

It’s Time to Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons

By Linda Pentz Gunter – Maria Arvanitis Sotiropoulou 
Counterpunch
April 19, 2023

An A-10 attack plane, used to fire depleted uranium missiles, surveys targets during the Gulf War. (Photo: Tech. Sgt. Fernando Serna/Wikimedia Commons)

On March 21, 2023 Britain confirmed that it was sending depleted uranium (DU) weapons to Ukraine , prompting a response from Russian president, Vladimir Putin, that, “If all this happens, Russia will have to respond accordingly, given that the west collectively is already beginning to use weapons with a nuclear component.”

…

Despite Putin’s thinly veiled threat mount a nuclear response to DU weapons, the International Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) points out that this would be disproportionate because “DU projectiles are not nuclear weapons at all, but conventional weapons of high chemical-radiological toxicity and harmfulness.”

Adds Dr. Frank Boulton of the British IPPNW affiliate, MEDACT: “Much if not most of the toxicity of DU is biological rather than radiological (DU is a heavy metal with biological effects similar to that of lead)”.

The US and NATO used around 980,000 rounds of uranium shells in Iraq and Kuwait, 10,800 in Bosnia, 31,000 in Kosovo , another 7,000 in S. Serbia and Montenegro, and an unknown number in Afghanistan, while Russia also used such weapons in Chechnya.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/19/279677/print/

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org





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