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Central News Agency

SOLOMON ISLANDS, 9 May 2002 -- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied on Wednesday that a Taiwan company has won permission to store toxic industrial waste in the Solomon Islands.

MOFA spokeswoman Katherine Chang was responding to an AFP wire report that said the Taiwan company Primreview Forest will be granted a license to store industrial waste on a largely untouched island in the Solomon Islands, a country nearly bankrupt after three years of civil war.

The report also quoted the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corp. as reporting that the South Pacific nation is also negotiating a nuclear waste storage deal with Taiwan Power Company.

Chang said that the ministry had earlier learned of the toxic waste storage matter and alerted the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA). The EPA found that Primreview Forest had not received export permission and that the company had disbanded in mid-February after learning that it was prohibited from exporting its industrial waste overseas, she said.

Stressing that Taiwan has the technology to handle the toxic waste, Chang said that the government will never dump waste it cannot handle to overseas locations, as the world is a global village and the government attaches great importance to environmental protection. She added that the government will act according to the relevant laws.

Chang also said that the report about the Solomon Islands negotiating a deal with Taipower regarding the storage of nuclear waste is "erroneous" and unfounded.

Lin Ming-hsiung, director of Taipower's Nuclear Backend Management Department, said that Taipower is actively looking for nuclear waste disposal sites at home and abroad, and that it is reviewing several options.

But he said that he has never had any contact with the Solomon Islands regarding the nuclear storage issue and that the media report is the first time he has heard about the matter.

Taipower has discussed with Russia, North Korea, mainland China and the Marshall Islands the possibility of storing its nuclear waste at sites in those countries.