Belarusian Green Party has sent the President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite an open letter, urging her to voluntarily leave the presidency. The Belarusian activists explain their motives by the attempt of the Lithuanian authorities to hide the information about the accident at the first unit of Ignalina NPP, occurred on October 5, 2010.
Thus, «Green» party activists note in the letter that the information about the incident at the plant reached the Belarusian society only a month later, in early November. «The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of Belarus received no information about the incident at Ignalina nuclear power plant from the Lithuanian side,» the activists stressed.
However, on October 20, 2010, two weeks after the accident at the station, Grybauskaite arrived on a working visit to Minsk and held talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. «There was not a single word about the accident, occurred at Ignalina nuclear power plant either in the official program or in the materials after the meeting,» the Belarusian Party of Greens.
According to the party activists, the president of Lithuania «actually follows the practice of concealment of the problem, as the Soviet leadership used to do with an accident at Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Belarusian «Greens» Accused Grybauskaite of Hypocrisy
«Representatives of Lithuania has repeatedly expressed concerns over the nuclear plant construction. However, regarding recent developments, all these accusations seem to be nothing but hypocrisy,» the «Greens» said.
«Lithuania is an EU member and is going to chair the OSCE next year. What moral example does the first person of Lithuania give to the Belarusian authorities in the practice of reacting to the emergencies in the country? What conclusions wil the Belarusian authorities come to in respect of the mandatory implementation of the Aarhus Convention (Convention for European Economic Commission Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters — Telegraf)?» the letter to the Lithuanian president stressed.
Activists also point out that Lithuania plans to build a repository for discharged nuclear fuel of Ignalina nuclear power plant, remaining from Soviet times. «We hope that such traits of totalitarian policies as hypocrisy and concealment of important environmental information will be buried together with the discharged fuel elements of the station,» representatives of the Belarusian environmental movement said.
According to Telegraf, about 300 tons of highly radioactive liquid were spilled during the works on decontamination at the first block of Ignalina nuclear power plant, closed on October 5, 2005. In this case, according to witnesses, employees and premises of the station were irradiated. However, the Lithuanian authorities didn’t inform Belarus on the incident, as, officially, pollution hadn’t been spread beyond the station.
