27/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - On 26 April, the nineteenth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, several MEPs have written an open letter to Alexander Lukachenko, calling on him to stop preventing children from his country participating in a special holiday programme abroad set up each year by a number of different organisations. Marinus Wiersma, Mechtild Rothe and Joseph Muscat (Socialist group) and German Green Elisabeth Schroedter underlined that seven million people were still suffering from the effects of the 1986 disaster and that Belarus was the country the most affected with 70% contamination. The MEPs pointed out that after the incident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, civic initiatives were launched to help those contaminated in Belarus. The MEPs are concerned about recent news from Belarus according to which the Belarus regime is attempting to severely limit the number of children authorised to leave the country.