If Croatia decides to dump nuclear waste at Trgovska Gora, near Bosnia’s northern border, then Bosnia should also dump nuclear waste at its southern border to Croatia, the one near Dubrovnik, the Minister of Spatial Planning, Construction and Ecology in Bosnia’s Serb-majority region said on Tuesday.
“But that is not the way problems should be solved,” Minister in the government of Bosnia's semi-autonomous Republika Srpska (RS) entity, Srebrenka Golic, added.
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Golic said Bosnian officials found out from media that Zagreb might store a portion of the waste from the nuclear plant of Krsko at Trgova Gora. She said she sent Croatia requests for clarification, but that those were ignored.
She also accused the central government in Sarajevo of ignoring the issue.
“We are seeking the truth,” Golic said.”If Croatia would respect international norms, its next step would be to begin working on a study on how it would affect the environment,” she said, adding that Bosnia adopted and ratified the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context which says that all affected countries must be actively engaged in the process.
“We have not been informed about that happening either,” she said.
Should Croatia continue this silence, the next step would be a call for arbitration. The case could be taken to an international court, Golic said.
There is another option, she added.
“We have radioactive waste as well. If they believe that they should poison our people, we will set up storage above Dubrovnik and call on everyone to dump their waste there,” Golic threatened.
Golic stressed that citizens in both of Bosnia's two semi-autonomous entities are worried and that RS authorities will not back down on the issue, as Croatia's intention is not only endangering the lives of the 230,000 people living in that area.
The mayor of the Novi Grad/Bosanski Novi municipality, Miroslav Drljaca, also said that the alleged project, as well as the ignoring of the citizens of his community just across the border, are unacceptable.
He announced that the issue will be discussed at a session of the local security forum and the local assembly.
“We expect the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina to protect their citizens so that we can live in an environment which is not ecologically endangered,” he said.
