January 4, 2001 By REUTERS ROME, Jan. 3 Italy said today that it had urged NATO to investigate reports that six Italian soldiers who died after serving in the Balkans had been killed by exposure to depleted uranium from spent ammunition fired by NATO forces. Prime Minister Giuliano Amato said in a newspaper interview alarm over the so-called Balkan syndrome was "more than legitimate." "This is a very delicate situation," he said in La Repubblica. "We've always known that depleted uranium was used in Kosovo, but not in Bosnia. We've always known that it was a danger only in absolutely exceptional circumstances like, for example, picking up a fragment with a hand on which there was an open wound, while in normal circumstances it isn't dangerous at all. But now we're starting to have a justified fear that things aren't that simple." NATO sources said today that the North Atlantic Council would discuss the issue at its regular meeting on Tuesday. In Lisbon, the Portuguese foreign minister, Jaime Gama, and his Belgian counterpart, Louis Michel, whose countries have also reported deaths among soldiers who served in the Balkans, told reporters that the truth had to be established. The defense minister of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, said in an interview that NATO told Rome last month that uranium had been used in Bosnia, as well as Kosovo. A spokeswoman at NATO headquarters in Brussels confirmed that the request from Italy "for more information on the geographic use of the depleted uranium." "Italy is a member country, and if it requests something, the alliance will do its best to help," she said. An association that represents the families of the six dead Italians released a copy of a document in English that it said was a list of NATO guidelines sent to commanders of Italian troops in the Balkans on dealing with depleted uranium. The head of the group, Falce Accame, said the document, dated Nov. 22, 1999, had not been given to troops before that date, although they had by then spent months in Kosovo. The document warned, "Inhalation of insoluble depleted uranium dust particles has been associated with long-term health effects, including cancers and birth defects." All six Italians had leukemia. The latest, a 24-year-old from Sicily, died in November after having served in Bosnia but not Kosovo. Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company