VIENNA (Reuter) - An international conference on the 1986 Chernobyl disaster opened Tuesday with a minute of silence for the victims past, present and future of the world's worst nuclear accident.
More than 700 delegates, politicians and nuclear experts packed the conference hall for the opening speeches of the co-sponsors, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the European Union Commission and the World Health Organization.
In a message to the conference, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said the 10th anniversary of the explosion and fire at the nuclear power plant in Ukraine was a sombre moment.
``The consequences of the Chernobyl accident cannot be regarded as the problem of a few countries,'' Boutros-Ghali said in a statement read by IAEA chief Hans Blix.
``Even today the social, economic and environmental dimensions, both immediate and long-term, remain to be defined,'' Boutros-Ghali said.
Focusing on the human tragedy of the accident at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986, the U.N. chief said it had displaced hundreds of thousands of people and shredded the social fibre of the states contaminated with radiation.
``More than 300 children have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, the fertility rate has declined dramatically and the mortality rate has increased,'' he said.
Heads of delegations from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine -- the countries most affected by radioactive fallout from the explosion -- will address the conference directly, the Vienna-based IAEA said.
While the explosion spread radiation over most of Europe, Belarus, a country of 10 million people, suffered most from the blast at Chernobyl just over the border in Ukraine. Seventy percent of the radiation which swept across Europe fell on Belarus -- then part of the Soviet Union.
The estimated total radioactivity released from the blast was 200 times more than from the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, the World Health Organization said.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yevhen Marchuk were expected to deliver statements to delegates later Tuesday.
The conference president, German Environment Minister Angela Merkel, said the meetings would attempt to pull together the reams of studies and analyses prepared by scientists and international bodies over the past 10 years.
The experts have to look at the current problems at Chernobyl, the safety of the concrete sarcophagus around the destroyed reactor and safety measures for the 15 Chernobyl-type reactors still in operation.
The meetings will also address the health problems suffered in the affected areas and environmental issues such as the contamination of vast stretches of land.
Quoting a United Nations study, the environmental group Greenpeace estimates 160,000 square km (62,000 square miles) of land are contaminated with radioactivity.
All speakers stressed that substantial financial aid was vital if safety improvements were to continue at existing reactors and countries were to improve living conditions and health care of those people most severly affected.