Representatives of a number of ministries and agencies arrived in Brest to assess the need for facilitating the removal of radioactively contaminated soil from two uranium handling facilities, 802 and Zapadny, at the center of the city.
The facilities were used in the Soviet era for reloading trucks coming from East Germany from European-gauge railroad cars into wider-gauge cars common in the former USSR.
In the early 1990s, environmentalists called on the authorities to remove the radioactive soil from the facilities and decontaminate the area, pointing to the close location of the city water intake facility.About 23,000 cubic meters of soil has to be buried at a dumping site for solid waste in the Malorita district. Work on preparing the burial ground started in 2001 but later stalled because of insufficient funding.
The soil disposal and the decontamination are expected to require a total of 5 billion rubels. However, only 400 million rubels has been earmarked for the purpose in the national budget and 300 million in the regional budget this year. Brest residents hope that the experts will realize the need to increase the funding, as an examination carried
out a few years ago discovered contaminated soil at a depth of 1.5 meters in some areas, with the groundwater level located 1.7 meters deep.
Pinsk district is the first area in Belarus' southwestern Brest region to encounter the problem of peat and pasture fires this spring.
Fire came quite as a surprise, instead of expected flood water. Hundreds of hectares were ablaze on Tuesday, with last year's dry grass going up like gunpowder. On Sunday, blaze almost pressed against Pinsk's boundaries enfolding the city in smoke.
It took firefighters the whole day until late in the evening to curb the blaze before it could reach human dwellings.
Viktor Shevchuk, head of the Pinsk Fire and Rescue Unit, told BelaPAN on Tuesday that the situation was under control and emergency teams were battling the fire outside the 130,000 city.
The regional government has tasked village executive committees with organizing firefighting operations on fields and peat marshes.
The regional Fire Control Department and environmental service are expected to take measures to raise fire awareness among the local population.
A 30-year-old woman, who served as senior inspector with the Zapadny Bug customs house, was stabbed to death at a bus stop in Brest at about 9 p.m. on March 24.
Investigators have already established a suspect, a 40-year-old unemployed woman, who is being searched for. Jealousy is said to be the most probable motive.
Officers of the Zapadny Bug customs house and the Brest regional office of the Committee for State Security (KGB) seized jet fighter components at the Kozlovichi checkpoint on Belarus' Polish border last week.
Two propellant tanks and other spare parts for jet fighters were found in a truck-trailer en route from Russia to Poland. The transportation documents described the shipment as ferrous metal tanks.
Belarusian regulations ban such exports. Criminal proceedings have been launched under Article 229 of the Criminal Code. Investigators currently try to establish the shipment's consignor and consignee.
The Leninsky District Court in Brest has found Aleksandr Maksimenko, the former chairman of the Brest City Soviet, guilty of repeated large-scale fraud and sentenced him to five years in a high-security correctional institution under Article 209 of the Criminal Code.
Mr. Maksimenko reportedly borrowed money, promising high
interest, and failed to repay.
Criminal proceedings against Mr. Maksimenko were launched in early 2002. Shortly before this, the City Soviet dismissed him as chairman without giving any official explanation. He was placed in a pretrial detention center in February 2003. The sentence has not yet taken effect and the ex-deputy can appeal it to a higher court.
No big changes occurred in the composition of the Brest Regional Soviet after the local election earlier this month with half of deputies serving a second term under the chairmanship of Leonid Lemeshevsky reelected at the soviet's first meeting on March 24.
Deputies at the first meeting did not, however, limit themselves to merely organizational matters. They adopted an appeal to the Ministry of Health against the planned closure of the vocational medical school in Baranovichi, the region's second largest city.
Apart from the Baranovichi school, the ministry plans to discontinue financing medical schools in Molodechno, Slonim and Polotsk next year citing oversupply of nurses.
Sergei Panko, the region's chief health officer, asked the soviet to propose that the government allocate at least a minimal amount to keep the Baranovichi medical school running next year and give it time draw funds from off-budgetary sources. The appeal was prompted by protests
from the school lecturers, students and their parents. Eighty-three candidates, including 27 from political parties, were running for the 60 seats in the regional soviet in the March 2 election. The parties, however, failed to win a single seat, Aleksandr Koleda, chairman of
the regional election commission, told the deputies. Two districts - one in the Beryoza district and one in Pinsk - will see by-elections.
Sixteen of the regional deputies work in the manufacturing
and transport industries, 10 in agriculture, 11 in the education, science and culture sectors, 10 in healthcare, 1 in commerce, 5 are civil servants, and 5 are military or police officers. There are 11 women on the soviet.
Vadim Popov, chairman of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly, in his speech to the deputies called the local election a great political victory over ill-wishers.
Seven representatives of a "non-party democratic group" are among the 12 persons who were elected to the 25-seat City Soviet in Beloozyorsk, Brest region, in the first round, according to local sources.
They are members of non-governmental organizations including the Francisak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society, the unregistered Regional Cooperation Center, and the local women's group Tais.
"The factors that led to the success of democratic-minded candidates in the city are the dire straits of people and the candidates' determination," Yury Gubarevich, leader of the Regional Cooperation Center, told BelaPAN. Beloozyorsk has a population of 14,000.
As many as 77.1 percent of all eligible voters cast their ballots in the local elections in the Brest region, according to Aleksandr Koleda, head of the regional election commission.
Voter turnout exceeded 80 percent in most of the region's districts and amounted to 90.8 percent and 92 percent in the Baranovichi and Pinsk districts, respectively. The number of voters who cast their ballots in Brest and Baranovichi was unexpectedly large as well, Mr. Koleda
said. The lowest turnout was in the city of Pinsk, where only 61.4 percent exercised their right of voting. The voting resulted in the election of deputies in numbers sufficient for a quorum in 258 out of 259 soviets of
various levels in the region, according to Mr. Koleda. An insufficient number of deputies were elected to the Beloozyorsk Soviet.
Fifty-five deputies were elected to the 60-seat Brest Regional Soviet. Runoff rounds will be held in three districts and repeat elections in two ones in the regional capital.
Sufficient numbers of deputies were elected to all city soviets, Mr. Koleda said. Run-off rounds will take place in nine districts in Brest, five in Baranovichi and four in Pinsk. Repeat elections will be held in two electoral districts in Baranovichi, three in Pinsk and three in Brest.
As many as 547 deputies were elected to the region's district soviets, which have a total of 573 seats. Run-off elections will be held in three districts. In general, 3,551 out of the necessary 3,682 deputies were
elected to soviets of various levels in the Brest region, which is a "very good result for local elections," Mr. Koleda said.
Asked by BelaPAN about violations of electoral regulations discovered by the election commission, Mr. Koleda said that no written complaints had been filed with the commission. According to him, the commission had received some complaints by telephone and probed them. "But there have been no complaints about violations that would influence
the elections' results," the regional election commission's head stressed.
The Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC) intends to contest the results of the March 2 voting in the Brest Regional Hospital located in the city's Electoral District N10.
One of the two candidates in the district, Valentin Lazarenkov of the Belarusian Free Trade Union, accused the voting-precinct commission of failing to post his campaign ads at the polling station. Mr. Lazarenkov, who is running against Aleksandr Karpitsky, chief physician of the hospital, said that his rival's campaign ads were posted at each floor in the hospital building.
Election officials denied observers permission to accompany them when they went room-to-room to deliver ballot boxes to patients, Igor Korobeinikov, a BHC observer, told BelaPAN. He said that he intended to report some 18 irregularities in the voting-precinct to the regional and city election commissions.
Mr. Lazarenkov said that just 18 patients give him their votes, while 591 supported his rival. The regional branch of the BHC said these were the most serious irregularities reported by its observers so far.
Vladimir Velichkin, leader of the Brest branch of the Vyasna human rights center, was evicted by police from a voting place in Brest on the morning of March 2 after a poll worker labeled him a "provocateur."
Mr. Velichkin, who coordinated election observers, arrived at the school that housed polling station No. 78 to familiarize himself with the voting process there. "I asked the precinct commission's chairman for permission to make a picture," he told BelaPAN. "After I took out my camera, a woman from among the commission whose name I do not know shouted that I am a provocateur. A police officer on duty called a patrol. Some people armed with assault rifles arrived to look into what was going on. They examined my papers, consulted someone on the phone for a long time and then said there was nothing wrong in my conduct but escorted me out of the building."
Mr. Velichkin noted that Belarusian regulations provide for punishment for a false alarm. He said that he would report the incident to the central election commission. The Vyasna human rights organization's Brest branch had fielded 24 observers. Seventeen of them operated in the
regional center.A total of 1,200 representatives of workers' collectives,
political parties and non-governmental organizations observed the local elections in the Brest region. Observers devoted particular attention to the elections for the Brest City Soviet and the Brest Regional Soviet,
according to the regional election commission. Dmitry Shimansky, leader of the Suzorye youth organization, told BelaPAN that six representatives of his organizations were monitoring the election process. All of them were placed in the three polling stations of District No. 2. According to Mr. Shimansky, they had not reported any irregularities during the five-day early voting.
There were 998 polling stations in the region. Some 4,000 people competed for seats in soviets of various levels. More than 23 percent of all eligible voters had reportedly exercised their right of early voting.
28 March 2003