Nuclear waste row leaves bad smell in Lithuania
Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Thursday August 25 2005
The Guardian

A bizarre diplomatic skirmish has broken out after Belarus retaliated against Lithuania's decision to build a radioactive waste dump close to their shared border by announcing plans to put two giant pig farms in sniffing distance of its neighbour.

Minsk complained that it had not been consulted and the facility would threaten its nearby Braslavsky lakes national park.

Now it has retaliated with a project of its own: two farm complexes for a total of 216,000 pigs close to Lithuania's southern border, one beside a river that runs straight into the Baltic country.

The Lithuanian prime minister, Algirdas Brazauskas, condemned the plans in a radio interview this week, saying: "Construction of a pig complex in the Neman river basin would be a barbarous act."

Waste could flow down the river to a popular spa resort at Druskininkai in south-west Lithuania, officials in Vilnius believe.