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On Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Buri wrote: > ...I would note that DU has been condemned by the United > Nations Human Rights Tribunal (August 1996 Session of the UN Commission on > Human Rights, Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and > Protection of Minorities). The Human Rights Commission has requested that > the Secretary General prepare a written report on DU and certain other > weapons of mass destruction (Resolution 1997/36, which also established a UN > Rapporteur to take over the study of DU and other weapons of mass > destruction on behalf of the UN). A couple of brief corrections to this section of Buri's posting on DU. Buri repeats the oft-repeated claims that DU has been condemned by a UN Sub-commission, which has classified it as a WMD. Unfortunately, this is not quite accurate. The Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in Resn 1996/16 (29 August) in its commentary on DU merely: "[u]rges all States to be guided in their national policies by the need to curb the production and the spread of weapons of mass destruction or with indiscriminate effect, in particular .. weaponry containing depleted uranium.." As anyone familiar with the language of UN commissions will be able to tell, this falls far short of a condemnation of DU - merely a call for a curb on production and proliferation. Nor does it say that DU is a WMD; rather it classifies DU as one of the "weapons of mass destruction or with indiscriminate effect" - ie it could be the latter but not the former. Sub-commission resn 1997/36 of 28 August 1997 makes no further comments on DU (which is why it was passed unanimously). Furthermore, the sub-commission dropped the issue after that date. The only subsequent commentary from UN human rights bodies on DU has been the latest report of the human rights special rapporteur on Yugoslavia, who notes DU as one of his many areas of concern. Just to clarify - of course, this makes no difference to the argument about the health effects of DU; just that one shouldn't claim the UN has (yet) accepted these arguments. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk Full archive and list instructions are available from the CASI website: http://welcome.to/casi