It seems that NATO's bombing is leading to serious chemical spills and
other ecological disasters in the region that will not only affect the
present generation but many to come...

The first part is an article by George Monbiot in today's Guardian; the
second is non-independent verification of some of the claims by a group of
scientists who are in Belgrade (I am not suggesting that this is the whole
truth, please note)...


Consigning their future to death George Monbiot warns that bombing
Belgrade's chemical plants will poison the unborn Thursday April 22, 1999

The Nato commanders trying to explain what happened to the refugee convoy
they bombed sounded rather like the police at the Stephen Lawrence enquiry.
They did their utmost to appear contrite, without actually apologising.
Sorry, for the guardians of law and order, always seems to be the hardest
word.
But even as the alliance tied itself in circumlocutory knots, it continued
to engage in the slaughter of non-combatants. Slowly, largely silently, it
is killing thousands of civilians. They are being neither bombed nor shot:
the people of the former Yugoslavia are being poisoned.
Nato's immediate war aim is to destroy the Serb economy, in order to
restrict Milosevic's capacity either to attack the Kosovan Albanians or to
retaliate against Nato troops. This may or may not be working. But whatever
its impact on the Yugoslav Republic's economy might be, Nato is succeeding
in wiping out its ecology.
The Nato press office claims that it has 'no idea' how many chemical plants
and oil installations its bombers have hit. But it concedes that there have
been multiple raids on a vast oil refinery and chemicals complex in the
suburbs of Belgrade, on another chemicals facility close to the capital and
on an oil refinery at Novi Sad, in the north of the country.
Britain's Ministry of Defence told me yesterday that the bombers are
'keeping the risks of pollution to a minimum', but it was unable to explain
how, while blowing chemicals plants to pieces, they have achieved this
commendable feat. Nato informed me that 'the smoke from these fires is
barely comparable to the smoke caused by the Yugoslav attacks on several
hundred villages'. It's clear that neither agency has the faintest idea
what it's talking about.
The chemical tanks ruptured by Nato bombers on the outskirts of Belgrade
last week contained a number of lethal pollutants. Some held a complex
mixture of hydrocarbons called 'naphtha', others housed phosgene and
chlorine (both of which were used as chemical weapons in the first world
war), and hydrochloric acid. As the factories burnt, a poisoned rain,
containing hundreds of toxic combustion products, splattered Belgrade, its
suburbs and the surrounding countryside. Broken tanks and burst pipes
poured naphtha, chlorine, ethylene dichloride and transformer oil, all
deadly poisons, into the Danube. Oil slicks up to 12 miles long wound their
way towards Romania.
It could, it seems, have been worse. Scientists at the plant claimed that
one of the bombs 'grazed' a vast vat of liquid ammonia. If that had gone
up, it would have poisoned most of the people of Belgrade.
These toxins are unlikely to kill people immediately. But they will have
soaked the soil across hundreds of square miles and percolated into the
aquifers. The people of the former Yugoslavia, as a result, will be
repeatedly exposed to them. Many of the compounds released cause cancers,
miscarriages and birth defects. Others are associated with fatal nerve and
liver diseases. The effects of the bombing of Serbia's economy equate, in
other words, to low-intensity chemical warfare.
Nato might also be waging an undeclared, invisible nuclear war. During the
Gulf war, the Allies deployed a new kind of munition: bullets and bombs
tipped with depleted uranium, or DU. DU, being heavier than lead or steel,
penetrates armour more effectively. In lump form it is only moderately
harmful, but when the munitions explode they scatter thousands of
particles, small enough to be inhaled. The Atomic Energy Authority
predicted that if 50 tonnes of DU dust were released in Iraq, 500,000
people would die of cancer. In the event, according to the Campaign Against
Depleted Uranium in Manchester, some 700-900 tonnes of DU were deployed.
The result, the investigator Felicity Arbuthnot found, is a seven-fold
increase in leukaemia and a massive rise in the incidence of certain rare
cancers in Iraq. Thousands of Iraqi children have been born without eyes,
limbs, brains and genitalia. DU has also been associated by some scientists
with Gulf War Syndrome.

I asked the MoD whether DU is being deployed in the former Yugoslavia.
'Certainly not', the press office replied. I asked Nato. 'It's used in some
American munitions,' I was told.
This, in environmental terms at least, is perhaps the dirtiest war the West
has ever fought. Nato's scorched earth policy, which seeks to destroy
Milosevic's armed capacity by destroying everything else, places the
Alliance firmly on the wrong side of the Geneva Convention. For a war which
targets chemical factories and oil installations, which deploys radioactive
weapons in towns and cities, is a war against everyone: civilians as well
as combatants, the unborn as well as the living. As such, it can never be a
just one.


>> Department of Organic Chemical Technology and Polymers
>> Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy
>> Belgrade University
>> Belgrade, Yugoslavia
>>
>> Until yesterday we could attempt to understand, although not accept, NATO=
>> =92s
>> bombing of Yugoslavia in terms of their military, strategic or logistic
>> aims, even though some tragic accidents had occurred. This changed
>> dramatically in the night from Saturday to Sunday (17 - 18th April, 1999)
>> when NATO deliberately bombed the poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) and vinyl
>> chloride monomer (VCM) plants at Pancevo. Subsequently, increased
>> atmospheric concentrations, well above the allowed limits (an unconfirmed
>> report spoke of more than 10 000 times higher values), were measured in t=
>> he
>> vicinity of the VCM plant.
>>
>> Also, all day Sunday, the VCM storage tank was emptied by controlled burn=
>> ing
>> to prevent an even greater ecological catastrophe. During this process, h=
>> uge
>> quantities of the "greenhouse" gas, carbon dioxide, and the acid gas,
>> hydrogen chloride, were released into the atmosphere. As scientists, you
>> will realize the significance of this irresponsible NATO act. VCM is a
>> colourless, odourless and tasteless gas which is extremely carcinogenic. =
>> PVC
>> was banned for food packaging because of the ppb quantities of VCM it
>> contains. It is also known that developed countries have dislocated their
>> production of VCM and PVC to third world countries because of the extreme
>> health risks involved. Due to the very precise initial bombing of the
>> Pancevo Oil Refinery, which disabled the water vapour production unit, th=
>> us
>> preventing the operation of the entire petrochemical complex, it is obvio=
>> us
>> that NATO is very well aware of the layout of each individual unit in the
>> complex and is able to exactly pinpoint its targets. Consequently, the
>> targeting of the VCM unit was deliberate, although there was no military =
>> or
>> strategic object in the vicinity. Pancevo has 140 000 inhabitants and lie=
>> s
>> about 15 km from Belgrade which has a population of over 2 million. The V=
>> CM
>> plant is about 5 km from the center of Pancevo. NATO has continuously
>> stressed that it has no quarrel with the Serbian people. In view of the
>> events of the night from Saturday to Sunday, the credibility of this
>> statement must now be questioned. As the spreading of dangerous and toxic
>> vapors cannot be hindered by international borders, this new development =
>> in
>> the strategy of NATO must be of concern not only to neighboring countries=
>> ,
>> but to the complete international community.
>>
>> We would ask you to ensure, in any way available to you, that this new,
>> extremely dangerous policy of NATO becomes known to the people of the wor=
>> ld,
>> in the hope that world opinion can stop NATO=92s action before an ecologi=
>> cal
>> catastrophe results.
>>
>> Dr Dejan Skala
>> Professor, Division of Chemical Reaction Engineering
>>
>> Dr. Ivanka Popovic
>> Professor, Division of Polymer Processing
>>
>> Dr Jovan Jovanovic
>> Professor, Division of Petroleum Processing
>>
>> Dr Milorad Sokic
>> Professor, Division of Chemical Reaction Engineering and Crude Oil Refini=
>> ng
>>
>> Dr Dusanka Petrovic Djakov
>> Professor, Division of Organic Chemical Technology
>>
>> Dr Jovanka Filipovic
>> Professor, Division of Polymer Synthessis
>>
>> Lynne Katsikas
>> British Guest Scientist
>>
>
>
>--
>_________________________________________________________
>Dr. Alberto Di Fazio
>senior scientist
>Astronomical Observatory of Rome
>Viale del Parco Mellini, 84
>I-00136 ROMA    Italy
>tel: +39-06-35347056/35452147/35452656
>fax: +39-06-35347802

David Wood
PhD Student ('The Rural Peace Dividend')
Department of Agricultural Economics and Food Marketing
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU

Tel: 0191 222 5305

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