The Belarusian authorities have said nay to a group of members of the European Parliament who were set to visit the construction site of the Astravets NPP which is just 50 kilometres from the capital of Lithuania.
MEPs Petras Auštrevičius, Algirdas Savdargas, Bronis Ropė and Rebecca Harms were to arrive in Belarus.
“We wanted to come to Minsk, meet with representatives of the executive branch and ask them questions about the building of the Belarusian NPP. We also planned a meeting with representatives of several NGOs and a visit to the Astravets NPP construction site,” Lithuanian MEP Petras Auštrevičius said.
In its reply to the MEPs, the Belarusian side noted that arranging such meetings was not possible, since the officials did not have time to do that.
Auštrevičius considers the decision of the Belarusian authorities’ a response to the recent resolution condemning repressions and arrests in Belarus.
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The Lithuanian side has repeatedly criticized the construction of the nuclear power plant 50 kilometers from Vilnius and encouraged the rest of the countries of the United Europe to not buy electricity from the future NPP.
Lithuania is not only concerned about the proximity of the station to Vilnius, but also with a number of emergencies during the NPP construction.
Among the emergencies are a reactor vessel accident, when it fell during the transportation, the collapse of the concrete structure at the site between the reactors. Our channel was the first to report on the incident. Before the official request of the Lithuanian side, representatives of the Belarusian NPP denied this information.
Belsat.eu, following Delfi
