Kuchma pledges Chernobyl shutdown despite appeals, protests

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine - Ukraine pressed ahead Thursday with preparations to close the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, despite angry protests by plant workers and last-minute parliamentary calls to postpone Friday's shutdown.

''For the entire world, Chernobyl stands as negative symbol that should have no place upon the Earth,'' President Leonid Kuchma said.

Kuchma, speaking to reporters Thursday in Slavutych, the town that houses plant workers, called it ''the only right decision, from all points of view and first of all moral.''

Earlier, Kuchma took foreign dignitaries, including the prime ministers of Russia, Belarus and Georgia, on a tour of the plant, where reactor No. 3 has been kept running just enough to give authorities something to ceremonially bring to a stop.

Rainy weather gave an even more ominous look to the gray concrete sarcophagus encasing Chernobyl's ruined reactor No. 4 - the one that exploded 14 years ago in the world's worst nuclear accident. In nearby Pripyat, a town evacuated after the disaster, raindrops fell on empty apartment high rises with gaping holes instead of windowpanes.

The faces of Chernobyl workers reflected the gloom: many of the 6,000 employees will lose their jobs when the plant shuts down.

At Slavutych, dozens of people silently held placards reading: ''Dec. 15 is a tragedy for Slavutych'' and ''No to tomorrow's show in Ukraine.''

''I don't pity myself. But I have two small children and I worry about their future,'' said Yevhen Laptsov, a Chernobyl electrician who was among the protesters. ''That is what I fear.''

A weary-looking Kuchma later said he heard ''many bitter and mostly just words about myself and the government. The energy workers were absolutely right - I had almost nothing to tell them.''

For years, Ukraine resisted international calls to close Chernobyl, saying it couldn't do without the electricity and demanding foreign aid in return. Kuchma pledged to close the plant during President Clinton's visit earlier this year.

Last week, the European Commission approved a $585 million loan to help Ukraine build two new reactors to generate electricity.

Even as preparations for the closure were in full swing, Ukraine's parliament on Thursday adopted a Communist-sponsored nonbinding resolution urging the government to postpone the shutdown at least until April. Kuchma dismissed the step as ''political games.''

Kuchma is to issue the shutdown command Friday from Kiev, 80 miles away, through a television link with the plant.

The Chernobyl tragedy began April 26, 1986, when reactor No. 4 exploded and caught fire, contaminating vast areas in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, and spewing a radioactive cloud over Europe.

More than 4,000 Ukrainians who took part in the hasty Soviet cleanup effort have died and 70,000 were disabled by radiation, according to the government. About 3.4 million of Ukraine's 50 million people, including some 1.26 million children, are considered to have been affected by Chernobyl.

Even after the shutdown, Chernobyl won't be considered safe until all nuclear fuel is removed from its reactors, which will take years. It will take decades to make the leaky sarcophagus environmentally safe.