Belarus President Says West Stingy With Chernobyl Aid
Date: 27-Apr-05
Country: BELARUS
Author: Andrei Makhovsky
But Western countries, who accuse President Alexander Lukashenko of violating human rights, say the veteran leader has confounded relief efforts through a series of tax laws.
The fourth reactor at the Chernobyl power station, just over the border in Ukraine, exploded on April 26, 1986, sending radioactive clouds across Europe and contaminating vast tracts of land in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Several thousand deaths have been attributed to the blast. Millions were evacuated, sometimes more than once, or received treatment for various illnesses, particularly thyroid cancer. A quarter of Belarussian territory was affected.
"The West helped no one," Lukashenko, quoted by BelTA news agency, said on a tour of stricken southern regions. "We have still received nothing. We have rejected the old rags we were offered. We don't need them."
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has been running a programme to detect thyroid cancer in contaminated areas but said on Tuesday dwindling donor funds could put it at risk just as cancer rates are rising.
Western relief agencies say laws passed since Lukashenko came to power in 1994 have inhibited attempts to help by slapping taxes on funds entering Belarus and obliging donors to act through a government department on humanitarian aid.
Western groups also say they are being thwarted in their attempts to offer holidays to children from affected Belarussian regions by regulations making it harder for minors to travel.
PROTESTERS DETAINED
Belarus's small nationalist and liberal opposition traditionally holds protests on the anniversary to denounce what it says is the systematic crushing of freedom of expression.
But with rallies routinely broken up by police in recent months, activists decided against major gatherings and planned simply to submit a letter of demands to Lukashenko's office.
Police detained more than two dozen of the 300 protesters who gathered in the centre of Minsk.
In Ukraine, President Viktor Yushchenko and other leaders laid wreaths at a memorial. Hundreds of mourners filed through Slavutych, the town nearest the station at 1.26 a.m., the time when the disaster occurred during an unauthorised experiment.
Officials said efforts were being pursued to replace the crumbling concrete "sarcophagus" hurriedly erected by engineers around the burning reactor in the weeks following the explosion.
The station later resumed electricity production, but was closed in 2000 at the insistence of the international community.
Belarussian authorities have encouraged villagers to return to areas affected by high radiation despite criticism from some academics, including one jailed on charges of bribe-taking.
