Hungary plans to sue the Romania-based gold mining company Aurul for damages caused by a cyanide spill that devastated central Europe's principal rivers earlier this year, an official said Saturday.
"Hungary will launch the suit against the Aurul company for damages soon," said Janos Goenczy, the government commissioner responsible for clearing up the spill, quoted by the MTI news agency.
"The legal procedure will most probably be initiated at a Hungarian court," he told an environmental meeting in the eastern Hungarian village of Tiszadob.
Hungary has claimed that the 100,000 tons of cyanide residue spilled at the Baia Mare-based gold mining complex killed some 1,200 tons of fish in Hungary alone, as it traveled along the Somes, Tisza and then the Danube rivers, affecting six countries.
Goenczy's office is due to decide when to launch the suit on Monday.
He added that to avoid similar accidents and "for the safety of Hungary, the government would like to see that such sources of pollution are shut down or are made safe" in Romania's northern Transylvania region.
Hungary and Romania have agreed to pinpoint units potentially hazardous to the environment and have worked out a project to modernize them at a series of talks since the spill, he said.
Hungarian lawyers said at the meeting that outdated technology at the Aurul mine were responsible for the spill, otherwise the cyanide -- a byproduct of extracting gold from ore -- would not have reached the rivers -- BUDAPEST (AFP)
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