Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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private religious, non-profit or cultural organizations, as well as
organizations of Ukrainian Americans, to provide humanitarian and
medical assistance for about US $35 million in the last three to four
years. The DOD earmarked some funds for programs in the field of
Chornobyl related cancers which, we hope, will
make a difference at
least for some of the innocent victims of the catastrophe. We expect a
new portion of humanitarian shipments to arrive in Ukraine this week,
the week of the tenth anniversary of the tragedy.
Two weeks ago many people in this country and around the
world had a chance to see a broadcast on CNN TV network with the
objective coverage of the status of Chornobyl related consequences.
I
think the majority of viewers were shocked to learn that the research
projects,
needed not only for Ukrainians but for the whole mankind,
are not funded enough. The same is true for environmental cleanup
programs which have been promised by the international community at
some point but afterwards largely forgotten.
Having read in the USAID 1993 annual report on assistance to
the NIS that USAID was considering the plan to help us to reduce
contamination of the Dnipro River basin,
the water supply source for
30 million Ukrainians, we were encouraged. We were much less
encouraged reading exactly the same provisions in corresponding
reports a year and two years later.
Mr. Yuri Kostenko, my successor at
the position of the Minister of environmental protection and nuclear
safety of Ukraine, visited this country a number of times asking
for