Serbia’s health and environment ministries agreed to begin a state-sponsored investigation of the alleged effects on public health caused by the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
Serbian Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar and Environment Minister Goran Trivan signed an agreement on Tuesday to start the state-sponsored investigation of alleged damage caused by the NATO air campaign.
The investigation, which has funding of around 130,000 euros, will also include the ministries of defence and education, Beta news agency reported.
“We consider this our obligation to ourselves and to future generations,” Loncar told media in Belgrade after signing the agreement.
Trivan said that the investigation will not be limited to the effects of depleted uranium ammunition, but also the bombing of chemical plants that potentially had consequences for the environment and people’s health.
“There is no reason for anyone to be against this research, because our goal is only to determine the truth. It is not a matter of politics, we will use scientific methods that are acceptable all over the world,” Trivan said.
The ministers said that the research will be conducted by a council of scientists, a nationally-funded laboratory, a coordinating body, and a governing board made up of ministry representatives.
The head of the coordinating body, the chief neurosurgeon at the Clinical Centre of Serbia, Danica Grujicic, said that it will take at least two years for the probe to yield its first results.
“It’s important to say that our research will carry on regardless whether governments and prime ministers change,” Grujicic said.
The Serbian parliament already voted in May to establish its own commission to investigate the consequences of the 1999 bombing.
This body is modelled after an Italian parliamentary commission which determined that a number of Italy’s soldiers got cancer due to exposure to depleted uranium while serving abroad.
However, the doctor who was cited in the Italian parliamentary commission’s report later said that he was misquoted, and denied ever claiming there is a correlation between cancer and depleted uranium.
Despite scepticism from experts, Serbian media widely blame an alleged increase in tumour patients on the NATO bombing. However, they ignore the fact that depleted uranium was used almost exclusively on Kosovo.
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