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Reuters

A five-day conference in the Malaysian city of Kuching ended after delegates agreed a list of hazardous wastes and turned down an attempt to circumvent the dumping ban, they said.

"We are very much satisfied. It was a victory or all," Iwona Rummel-Bulska, executive secretary of the six-year-old Basel Convention, told Reuters.

"The world community has staved off threat to the ban decision," Kevin Stairs, head of the Greenpeace environmental group's delegation, told reporters.

The Basel Convention was adopted in March 1989 after a series of toxic cargoes from industrialised countries galvanised world outrage over the dumping of hazardous wastes in developing and East European countries.

More than 400 million tonnes of hazardous waste are generated each year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The convention entered into force in 1992, and its 117 parties were represented in Kuching, on the island of Borneo.

In 1995, parties to the convention adopted a ban on the export of hazardous wastes from industrialised to developing countries. A total of 16 countries have ratified the ban, and 48 others must do so before the ban enters into force.

In Malaysia, officials unanimously adopted two lists of wastes considered crucial to winning support for the ban.

The hazardous waste list, called List A, would ban the export of wastes containing arsenic, lead, mercury, asbestos and dozens of other chemicals and substances.

The non-hazardous waste list, called List B, would exempt from the ban wastes that can be safely recycled or re-used, including scrap iron, steel or copper, certain electronic assemblies, non-hazardous chemical catalysts and many ceramics, solid plastics and paper and textile wastes.

A third list, called List C, includes materials such as PVC-coated plastic cables which need to be studied before being categorised as hazardous or non-hazardous.

Delegates agreed this week to attach Lists A and B to the convention as annexes, not as amendments, a move which they said would facilitate ratification of the ban.

That is because any amendment would have to undergo the same lengthy ratification process as the ban, while an annex is simply attached to the text of the ban.

The other important decision related to a list of countries prohibited from sending hazardous wastes to poor nations.

The list, called Annex VII, is comprised of members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union and Liechtenstein.

Delegates blocked attempts by Israel, Monaco and Slovenia to have their names added to the list, a move that opponents said would have undermined the ban as they would then have been able to receive toxic wastes from other Annex VII countries.

Greenpeace spokesman Nityanand Jayaraman said the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand had supported the failed effort to add nations to Annex VII.

UNEP Executive Director Klaus Topfer said the conference would spur nations to ratify the ban.

"It is my sincere hope that the United States, one of the main negotiators and a signatory of this Convention, will soon become a contracting party," he said.

"This allows us to move to the next stage of the game, which is elimination of all trade in hazardous waste," Jayaraman said.

(c) Reuters Limited 1998