Whereas,

Serious claims about the Chornobyl nuclear disaster have been made by Elena Zabolotnogo, daughter of a nuclear physicist working in the "dead zone"; and whereas these claims include the following:

(1) radiation levels in Kiev are between 20-30% higher than the average American or Russian city;

(2) radiation will stay in the Chernobyl area for the next 48,000 years, and humans may not repopulate the area for 600 years - give or take three centuries;

(3) 3,500 people still live in the exclusion zone of the meltdown disaster;

(4) 70% of the Chernobyl radiation infected Belorusian territory and entire villages are unaccounted for;

(5) No one knows - not even approximately, the casualties of the disaster. The official casualty reports range from 300 to 300,000 and many unofficial sources put the toll over 400,000.

(6) Grotesque mutations of wildlife have been reported in the area;

AND whereas;

(7) poor records and corruption have prevented the accurate registration of the workers who helped put out the fire and entomb the smouldering nuclear plant in 1986;

(8) Seven million people in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine are estimated to suffer phyical or psychological effects from the radiation;

(9) More than 2.32 million people have been hospitalised in Ukraine as of early 2004 with illnesses blamed on the disaster, including thyroid and blood cancer.