IRISH aid workers led by Ms Adi Roche and Ms Ali Hewson of the Chernobyl Children's project have left the Chernobyl area for the Belarussian capital, Minsk. They have gone to plead directly with the President, Mr Alexander Lukashenko, to drop his plans to hold military exercises which could lead to a drastic increase in radiation levels in Belarus.
The Moscow newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that Belarus, which does not have the financial resources for full scale decontamination in the areas devastated by the Chernobyl explosion in 1986, has proposed to hold military exercises in which deserted villages would be destroyed by shelling and bombing.
Russian radiologists have protested at the move. saying that the use of military fire power would cause fires which would raise radiation levels to 1.000 times the normal rate and spread radioactive dust over 40 km.
Ms Roche said yesterday that she and her team of workers were leaving the contaminated area near the city of Gomel in an attempt to meet Mr Lukashenko in Minsk to persuade him to drop the dangerous plan. Mr Lukashenko was in Moscow yesterday for a meeting with President Yeltsin to discuss the closer integration of the two former Soviet republics.
"We have been working for the last week with people who have been suffering from the consequences of Chernobyl for the past 10 years. For them this will be the final straw." Ms Roche said yesterday. It will break their morale they have already suffered from fires which have broken out at the exclusion zone and from leaks at the plant this year. We have been to places where radiation levels have increased anyway. How much more are the people expected to suffer?
"We have been informed that the death rate of children in Gomel has increased and is now 15 per thousand."
Ms Karen Richardson, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace in London, said she found it difficult to believe that anyone could go ahead with such a dangerous idea. She suspected it might be part of a political intrigue to get money from the West for decontamination.
Mr Lukashenko, who has banned opposition newspapers, jailed protesters and is at odds with his parliament, plans a referendum on November 7th to extend his term as president and increase his already strong powers.
A leading parliamentarian and biologist, Dr Vikfor Homich, who heads the Belarussian parliament's commission on Chernobyl, said he has sent a letter to Mr Lukashcnko pointing out the danger of the exercises, but has received no reply.
Western pressure on Belarus, while called for by human rights activists and environmentalists could be counter productive. On Tuesday evening the national TV service which is controlled by Mr Lukashenko, lashed out at western countries whose ambassadors had delivered a joint statement to the foreign ministry, expressing concern about "current developments" in Belarus.
The move was according to TV broadcast, a "gross interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state".
