Depleted uranium ammunition

We join all those who are calling for clear and effective international legal instruments to forbid the use of depleted uranium ammunition. We find the use of depleted uranium weapons appalling, and as if war was not sufficiently undignified.

The international debate and scare on the use of depleted uranium weapons in the Balkans have proven yet again that the international community and public opinion deem that not all human lives are worth the same.

The West is rightly outraged by the 20 young lives of soldiers prematurely ended by depleted uranium. But who has until now moved a finger for the additional 2,000 cases of cancer, 75 percent of which among children, registered in Iraq annually?

By admission of the Pentagon, U.S.-led air strikes dropped some 944,000 depleted uranium ammunition rounds over Iraq.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Gulf War, we believe that the public in the so-called "developed world" needs to be informed, beyond governments and militaries' propaganda, about what really happened in Iraq over those two months and the 10 years that followed.

-- The Jordan Times, Amman