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TAIWAN GREEN GROUP PURSUES CAMBODIA WASTE SAMPLES

by WILLIAM IDE, Reuters

TAIPEI, Taiwan, 24 December 1998 -- (Reuters) - Taiwan environmentalists have gone to Cambodia to collect samples of mercury-tainted waste shipped there by a Taiwan firm, saying Taipei's inaction in the controversy was harming the island's reputation.

``The government seems powerless and the effect on Taiwan in the international arena gets worse each day,'' Joyce Fu of the private Green Formosa Front said on Thursday.

Fu said two Green Formosa members -- seeking to bridge a gap in communication between Taipei and Phnom Penh -- already had some samples.

``The government continues to say all it can get is information from foreign media,'' Fu said. ``They've been working on this for 10 days and have accomplished very little.''

Taipei has no formal ties with Phnom Penh as Cambodia recognises only Taiwan's arch rival, China.

Fu said the Green Formosa team, due back in Taipei on Sunday, had found no evidence to support allegations that anyone had died from contact with the materials.

Fu said the waste would be provided to independent experts, the company that shipped it and Taiwan's government.

Environmental officials said they would be pleased to lay their hands on samples of the waste, some of which has been recovered by Cambodian soldiers and isolated.

``We would certainly be willing to take some of the samples,'' said an official of the cabinet's Environmental Protection Administration. ``We would not reject it.''

The agency has pressed Phnom Penh, though to no avail, to allow its representatives to join a local inquiry on the ground in the southern Cambodian port of Sihanoukville, where the waste turned up in early December.

The Environmental Protection Administration said on Thursday it would ask again, this time on behalf of itself, the foreign ministry and Taiwan petrochemical giant Formosa Plastics -- the source of the waste.

Formosa has said the 3,000 tonnes of cement-like material is tainted with mercury but has been certified by the Environmental Protection Administration as safe for landfill disposal.

Green Formosa director T.J. Wu said in a statement faxed from Cambodia that, whatever his investigation finds, Taiwan had no right to dump contaminated waste in other countries.

Cambodia has demanded that Taiwan take the waste back and vowed to sue Formosa Plastics to compensate for the damage the waste had inflicted on Sihanoukville.

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