MINISTER FOR Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin is to seek a formal agreement with the Belarussian government to allow children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to travel to Ireland for holidays and medical treatment.
Mr Martin met the director of the Chernobyl Children's Project International, Adi Roche, in Cork yesterday to discuss a decision by the authorities in Belarus to ban children from the region from travelling abroad.
The ban, introduced after a girl from Belarus refused to leave the US, would apply to thousands of children from areas affected by the Chernobyl disaster who travel to Ireland every year for holidays and medical attention.
Mr Martin said the Irish Ambassador in Moscow would travel to Minsk today "to convey my satisfaction with the traditional, longstanding co-operation with the Belarussian authorities on the children's visits to Ireland".
He said that if the Belarussian government felt a more formal arrangement was required for such visits, "I would be happy to enter into discussions with them for this purpose at an early date.
"This will involve close co-operation with the Departments of Health, Justice and the Minister for Children, and initial work has already begun to deal with the necessarily complicated legal issues that such an agreement would have to cover, should the need arise," he added.
The Minister hopes to speak with his Belarussian counterpart as soon as possible, and the chargé d'affaires of the country's embassy in London has agreed to travel to Dublin for talks next Thursday.
Mr Martin said: "I know this issue has caused upset and worry to the many Irish families who have been involved with this work over the past 17 years.
"I want to assure them that I will do everything I can to ensure that no disruption is caused to a project which does great credit to this charity and to Ireland and whose roots are founded in the great Irish traditions of welcome and hospitality."
Adi Roche welcomed the Government's efforts and said she was encouraged by a commitment from the Minister to seek an Irish exemption from the ban. "He will be pleading . . . with the Belarussian ambassador to seek an exemption from the ban and give hope back to the thousands of children who year after year come to Ireland for rest and recuperation," she said. Ultimately, those children would be the greatest losers if the ban was enforced, Ms Roche added, "leaving the most vulnerable and fragile children in isolation and despair".
The ban was introduced by the authorities in Minsk after a Belarussian girl refused to leave the US. Tanya Kazyra (16), was on her ninth, and last, visit to a family in California when she failed to board the return flight from San Francisco on August 5th. The Belarussian government imposed similar restrictions in 2004, but they were lifted within weeks after representations were made by Dublin and other governments.
