September 2, 2002 By MARLISE SIMONS KOTOR, Montenegro - In the early morning hours, the scientists come to work on a small tongue of land with one of the loveliest views along the Mediterranean. Behind them is the stunning bay of Kotor and its crown of steep mountains, ahead is the shimmer of the open sea, a few hours' sail from Italy. But the men hunch down, their eyes fixed on the ground. They scoop up bits of soil and rock, moving slowly and meticulously like archaeologists. Protective clothing covers them from head to toe. The cape, closed off to tourists, is marked with signs saying "Radioactive Danger. Trespassing Forbidden." The scientists from Montenegro are searching for war debris, specifically bullets coated with slightly radioactive depleted uranium. American warplanes fired some 480 rounds at the cape on the final day of NATO's 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia, according to NATO records. No one was killed. But to the scientists, the attack is inexplicable. The only tokens of past life are a collapsed bunker and some ruined walls more than a century old, leftovers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. "We don't understand why anyone would want to attack and contaminate the place on the last day of the war," said Perko Vukotic, a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Montenegro at Podgorica who heads the 12-man cleanup team. The group has collected scores of bullets and fragments, some buried deep in the soil. But the main problem, they say, is that casings have broken and many uranium parts have disintegrated and turned into potentially toxic dust. "Water corrodes the uranium and it becomes powdery," said Dr. Perkovic. "It crumbles as easily as cigarette ash and spreads in the soil. People can touch it or inhale it. The wind blows it around." The work in Montenegro, the little state that with Serbia makes up the federation of Yugoslavia, is the first thorough cleanup of uranium in the Balkans. NATO has disclosed that it fired thousands of rounds of munitions with tips of depleted uranium, one of the hardest metals and therefore suitable for penetrating targets like tanks, against targets in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro in 1999. Depleted of its most radioactive part for use in nuclear fuel, the material still emits low-level radiation. There have been heated debates in Europe over the use of this ammunition in the Balkans. The main concern was the risk that the material could have lasting ill effects on people and the environment. Pentagon and officials from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization acknowledge that depleted uranium, like other heavy metals, can be toxic, but insist that its low-level radiation is not harmful. Many civilian specialists agree, but some research in the United States, Canada and Britain has shown that uranium particles can be inhaled, enter the bloodstream and lodge in the bone, where they can deliver low but steady and potentially harmful radiation. There is no agreement on what is a harmful dose and some NATO countries want the ammunition banned. "We had to make a choice because nobody knows the truth," Dr. Vukotic said. "Either we say nothing about this and close Cape Arza. Or we decontaminate it." Industries that handle depleted uranium use special precautions to store it, he went on, so here it should not be lying around. The team is closely following the recommendations of the United Nations Environment Program, which conducted the only comprehensive study of the Balkan wars' environmental impact. In one of its reports, it said that "given the considerable scientific uncertainties" about long-term behavior of depleted uranium, the authorities should give the "highest priority" to forbidding public access, collecting and removing pieces and decontaminating areas where possible and store the material safely. Ground water should be monitored. The latest report, in March, said that, surprisingly, depleted uranium particles were "still in the air two years after the conflict's end." The decontamination team began work on the cape last year. The men move slowly, covering about 60 feet an hour, their instruments close to the ground. When a counter detects higher than natural radiation, the place is marked with a little yellow flag. Someone scoops up the soil and the stones. Each spoonful is put under the detector, then stored in boxes or bags, depending on its intensity. "It's very tedious, it's like detective work," Dr. Vukotic said. No one lives on the cape, but villagers have houses about a mile away and tourists visiting the ancient town of Kotor nearby come to hike here and visit the beaches. The team has sent its first cache - 160 large bullets, scores of fragments, more than 100 pounds of depleted uranium and three tons of low-level radioactive soil - in bags and boxes to Belgrade for temporary storage at the site of a research reactor. They estimate it will be twice that amount when they finish this fall. "We have no proper place to store this waste and we have to pay for this," said Ana Misurovitc, director of the Montenegro Toxicological Institute. The attack, she also noted, was May 30, 1999, the last day of the war. "Why did they bother then? It has already cost us more than half a million dollars in salaries, materials, equipment and storage, and we're not finished." This is a lot, she said, for a government with a budget of $300 million. In Brussels, a NATO spokesman said that "480 rounds were fired at a legitimate target on the cape, but we do not keep the targeting records." Villagers said that there was nothing to attack and that they had not seen soldiers around the site for more than a decade. A Western military official said he believed the site had a surveillance radar, but conceded this would have drawn fire at the start and not at the end of the air campaign. Serbia was hit by some 3,500 rounds of depleted uranium and its cleanup has only just begun. But Montenegrins feel wronged, Ms. Misurovitc explained, because they made it clear they were neutral in the war. She has tried to enlist the help of the United Nations and other international bodies with the uranium. Her message for NATO: "Come and take back your radioactive waste and pay for decontamination." Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company