WHO to Assess DU in Iraq

A team from the World Health Organisation arrived in Baghdad on 28th August to lay the  groundwork for research on a possible link between cancer and depleted uranium used  by U.S.-led forces in the 1991 Gulf War. “The visit is a follow-up of the meeting which was held in Geneva  between Iraqi and  WHO experts,” Abdelaziz Saleh, the deputy head of    WHO’s regional office in Cairo, told  reporters. He said the seven-member team would meet officials from the health and  foreign  ministries as well as experts in other U.N. agencies based in Iraq. WHO and Iraqi officials  met last April in Geneva, where they agreed to cooperate more in technical and scientific  fields. The team will launch WHO’s first comprehensive attempt to assess the state of public  health 11 years after a U.S.-led coalition bombed Iraq   over its invasion of Kuwait.  Baghdad has repeatedly accused Western powers of inflicting a creeping environmental  disaster on the country’s southern provinces by firing shells made with depleted uranium.  Official Iraqi figures show an increase in cancer cases from 6,555 in 1989 to 10,931 in  1997, mostly in areas bombed by U.S. led forces  during the war.