UKRAINE…

Vice President Al Gore stopped in Ukraine July 22-23 and paid a well publicized visit to Chornobyl. He renewed a perennial Western promise to fund reconstruction of the shell around the most toxic part of the complex, Reactor #4. The cost of the work is estimated at $760 million, of which $390 million has been pledged and $200 million actually transferred. President Leonid Kuchma told Gore that scheduled closure of Chornobyl in the year 2000 will not take place unless the aid promised by the Group of Seven large industrialized countries, some $2.3 billion in all, is actually disbursed.