Int'l community indifferent toward Aras River pollution: Official

'While the pollution in the Aras Border River is tantamount to an environmental disaster, the international community is turning a blind eye on the issue,' Mohsen Khadem Arab-Baghi Managing Director of the Aras free Trade-Industrial Zone, said on Thursday referring to the river in northwestern Iran.

Despite Iran's continued efforts to stop the chemical wastes dumped by a neighboring country from entering the river, the international community tends to remain silent on the issue, Arab-Baghi said in the first international meeting of transboundary conservation between Iran and its neighbors.

'The Aras River, flowing along the Iranian-Azerbaijan and the Iranian-Armenian border, finally finds its way to enter the Caspian Sea, the biggest lake in the world,' he said.

'And this is going to bode for nothing but an array of environmental problems for the Caspian littoral states,' he said.

He also said that the Aras free Trade-Industrial Zone is developing but he emphasized that a sustainable development is going to happen alongside with environmental protection.

2044**