Deal to allow 250 Chernobyl children have Irish Christmas

By Conor Ryan, Political Correspondent

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

MORE than 250 children living within the Chernobyl nuclear disaster fallout zone will be allowed to spend Christmas here after Government officials struck a deal with their Belorussian counterparts.

Intensive negotiations have taken place since September when Belarus moved to ban respite trips by 50,000 children because of negative publicity in America.

But yesterday Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin said a meeting in Minsk between officials from both countries was successful.

Mr Martin said he expected the deal to be signed soon: "Both sides agree that it should be signed as soon as possible and before the first group of children due to travel to Ireland for Christmas depart Belarus.

"The agreement will allow for the unrestricted continuation of visits by all children under 18, and will in the short term allow Christmas visits to proceed," he said.

The children will fly into Shannon where they will meet host families from around the country.

Adi Roche of the Chernobyl Children’s Project International said she was "overjoyed".

"This was Christmas coming early. Words cannot describe how relieved we all are for the children and their host families up and down the country who can at last spend Christmas together.

"We are the first country in the world to sign such an historic inter-governmental agreement," she said.

Last week Mr Martin outlined to Fine Gael’s Brian Hayes the complicated nature of negotiations.

Talks between the two countries were ongoing for 12 weeks including a meeting between the two foreign ministers in Brussels.

On November 14, a draft agreement was thrashed out and the text was sent to Minsk through the Irish Embassy in Moscow.

This was an update on a provisional bilateral agreement worked out between the two countries on October 14, two days before a presidential decree in Belarus banned all trips.

On November 28, Mr Martin spoke to his opposite number in Belarus to accelerate the discussions in time for the scheduled visit of children at Christmas time.

This paved the way for yesterday’s successful meeting in Minsk.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, December 09, 2008