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UK launches environment fund for eastern Europe
26th May 2003
Planet Ark
LONDON - Britain launched an Environment for Europe Fund it said would promote the ecology and sustainable development in central and Eastern Europe.
The fund, worth two million pounds ($3.27 million) in 2003/4, was launched at the U.N. Environment for Europe Conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Britain's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs () said in a statement.
It will be administered by and will focus on projects in countries in eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as designing an environment strategy for the region.
"The Environment for Europe Fund will enable the UK to give direct support to the activities which will follow-up the Kiev conference, including establishing priorities for the future," said Margaret Beckett, secretary of state for .
is already involved in environmental projects in the area as well as in Russia.
On Wednesday Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma appealed to Europe for more money to help deal with Chernobyl, saying Ukraine, unlike other countries, could never run away from the legacy of the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.
Chernobyl closed in 2000, nearly 15 years after its reactor No. 4 exploded, with Europe pledging to help complete two new reactors, a new concrete shelter for the stricken Chernobyl facility and clean up contaminated land.
(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper).
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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