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GREENPEACE ACCUSES DUTCH OF ACCEPTING TAIWANESE TOXIC WASTE

by Agence France Presse

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, 20 March 2000 -- The Dutch government denied Monday allegations from environmental campaigners that it had secretly accepted dangerous toxic waste from Taiwan after it was refused by Germany, France and the United States.

According to the pressure group Greenpeace, 32 containers of toxic waste containing mercury were accepted for incineration in The Netherlands in December last year.

"The cargo had previously been refused by the United States, France and Germany," the group said in a statement released from its Amsterdam office. But Marja van Passen, a spokeswoman for the Dutch environment ministry, said the containers, which had passed through Cambodia on their way to Europe, were empty. Van Passen said she had no idea where their contents might have gone.

Greenpeace and its fellow campaign group the Basel Action Network said the arrival of the containers, which it insists were full of toxic waste produced by the Taiwan firm Formosa Plastic, "violated the spirit of the Basel Convention, an international treaty which stipulates that countries should deal with their own toxic wastes."

In 1998 the unloading of toxic waste next to the port of Sihanoukville in southwest Cambodia, provoked riots. Greenpeace said that two dock workers were found dead after handling waste with a high mercury content.

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