MOSCOW, January 19 (AVN) - Russian Chief-of-Staff Anatoly Kvashnin has ordered to reinforce a complex commission of the Armed Forces environmental security department which is to leave for Kosovo soon to examine more than 3,000 Russian peacekeepers within FFOR, a competent source in the Defence Ministry told the Military News Agency.
The commission is to look into connection between the use of depleted uranium ammo by NATO troops in Yugoslavia and cases of leukaemia among servicemen. It will include military doctors and radiologists, as well as specialists in radiation, chemical and bacteriological defence equipped with alpha spectrometers and devices for studying low-radioactivity substances emission.
Changes among the commission members may have been caused by the fact that the advanced medical examination of Russian peacekeepers at the Russian military hospital in Kosovo Pole already exposed a serviceman with suspected blood cancer.
The results of blood tests taken from Russian peacekeepers will be clear by Saturday. But an additional advanced examination is likely to take place at the peacekeeping contingent, this time involving members of the commission. The body is chaired by Colonel Yuri Gudnin, officer of the environmental security department.