The delegations of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia will present their positions regarding the construction of a nuclear waste repository on Trgovska Gora today before the Committee of the Espo Convention in Geneva.
The BiH delegation is led by the Minister of Spatial Planning, Construction and Ecology of the Republika Srpska, Bojan Vipotnik, who said that he will argue that Croatia is violating international law by intending to build a nuclear waste repository on Trgovska Gora, on the border with BiH.
That location, says Vipotnik, does not meet any criteria for waste disposal in general, let alone nuclear waste.
He pointed out that they argued that Croatia is systematically violating the Espoo Convention on Transboundary Pollution.
These arguments, he emphasizes, are based on research and are legally sound, and he said that Croatia will not be allowed to violate our rights.
“The issue of building a storage facility for radioactive and spent nuclear waste on Trgovska Gora is not just political, economic or ecological, it is a matter of health and survival of people in the Una River basin and beyond from Bihać to Gradiška,” Vipotnik said.
The chairman of the BiH expert team for Trgovska Gora, Emir Dizdarević, previously stated that the decision that the Espoo Convention Committee could make in December is not binding, but that it carries weight.
Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Staša Košarac, told Srna that the BiH teams had prepared quality responses for the confrontation with Croatia, and expressed his expectation that the Espoo Committee would issue recommendations.
The president of the “Green Team” Association from Novi Grad, Mario Crnković, stated that there is reason for optimism ahead of the confrontation, assessing that matters related to Trgovska Gora have finally been raised to a higher level, which this topic deserves.
During the debate, three questions received by BiH and 13 received by Croatia will be discussed, to which both sides have responded, and possibly additional ones, while the conclusions of the Espoo Committee could be in December.
Croatia plans to store radioactive waste from the Krško Nuclear Power Plant, as well as existing institutional waste, at the Trgovska gora location in the Dvor municipality, right on the border with BiH.
