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Belgian Ambassador to Russia Vincent Mertens de Wilmars will arrive on Sakhalin Friday, the press service of the regional committee for international, foreign economic and interregional contacts reported (the time difference between Moscow and Sakhalin is 8 hours).
The high level diplomat said he would meet with the regions governor, the chairman of the regional duma (parliament), the Foreign Ministrys representative in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the regions prosecutor and the mayor of Kholmsk, the press service told RIA Novosti answering a question about whether the ambassadors visit was connected to the incident with the Belgian ship Cristoforo Colombo.
Since September 14 an investigation into the pollution caused | Ads |  |
by an oil spill from the Cristoforo Colombo, which ran aground on September 8 during Songda typhoon, has been conducted.
About 200 metric tons of oil spilled from the ships damaged engine room and fuel tanks into the sea and onto the shores of the southern Sakhalin city of Kholmsk, which is on the east coast of the Tartar Strait. (After the accident, the Belgian Embassy released a statement that the oil spill was several times smaller.) The Belgian captain of the Cristoforo Colombo, Nicolas Verbraeken, 33, was released on $100,000 bail and is currently in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, November 11 (RIA Novosti)
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