MOSCOW, December 2 (RIA Novosti) - China hopes that the toxic spill moving down the Songhua River toward the Russian border will awaken the two countries to the need to cooperate in protecting shared waters and other natural resources, a Chinese diplomat said Friday.
Sun Linjiang, press attache of the Chinese Embassy to Russia, told a Moscow press conference that the spill, caused by a November 13 explosion at a petrochemicals plant in northeastern China, had prompted the Chinese government to team up with the Russian Natural Resources Ministry to establish an intergovernmental commission and a task force for overseeing the protection of rivers and other aquatic resources in border areas.
Sun Linjiang also said Moscow and Beijing had agreed to appoint on-the-ground coordinators to deal with the aftermath of the accident and that a group of Russian specialists was now in China to measure the contamination levels in the Songhua, a tributary of Russia's Amur River.
According to Chinese sources, the concentration of benzene and other toxic chemicals in the 113-kilometer (70-mile) slick is currently 17.6 times the norm, down from Thursday's figure of 21.
A Russia-China hotline to exchange information on the spill has been operating since November 24, the diplomat said. He assured that Chinese authorities "have not concealed anything from Russia" and are trying hard to ensure the spill causes little or no damage to the neighboring Russian regions.
