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PROTESTERS GREET DUTCH DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER IN HONG KONG

Associated Press

HONG KONG, 16 April 1999 -- Greenpeace activists who accused an Anglo-Dutch shipping company of sending asbestos-contaminated ships to a Chinese scrapyard greeted visiting Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Annemarie Jorritsma with a protest Friday.

At a press briefing, the protesters unfurled a banner behind Annemarie Jorritsma that read ''P and O Nedlloyd: Stop Toxic Waste,'' and presented her with a report claiming that the Dutch company had sent two tainted ships to China to be broken up for scrap.

The report said soil samples taken by Greenpeace from the Chinese scrapyards contained asbestos, which was widely used in shipbuilding in the 1970s as a fire retardant.

Luisa Tam, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace China, said the shipping company never warned the scrapyards that the vessels were contaminated. Telephone calls by The Associated Press to the company's Hong Kong office were not answered Friday evening.

Jorritsma told the protesters that she had no knowledge of the incidents. The deputy prime minister, who arrived here after a trade mission to the Chinese mainland, will meet the territory's financial secretary, Donald Tsang, and property tycoon Li Ka-shing among other officials and business leaders.

Jorritsma, also minister of economic affairs, told reporters that she was ''quite happy'' with the results of her trade mission Beijing and Shanghai, despite the lack of signed contracts. She said it's too early to judge how much new business the trip will pull in for Dutch companies.

''It's not fair to look only at the number of contracts that have been signed during the week (of the trip),'' Jorritsma said.

FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The Basel Action Network is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability and environmental justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a `fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond `fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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