Tens of Thousands of Former Soviets Remember Chernobyl

Tens of thousands of people wept, prayed and marched Friday to mark the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that unleashed a lethal radioactive cloud over Europe and blighted millions of lives.

World leaders paid tribute to the army of workers who battled to contain the fire that broke out when the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded.

Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma said the disaster was a lesson to the world to ensure the safe use of nuclear technology.

“The main lesson of Chernobyl is that the nuclear burden on the planet has to be reduced,” he told a gathering of deputies and veterans of the cleanup operation.

President Clinton sent a letter of support to Kuchma, saying the pledge he has made to shut the plant is “a goal of the highest order.”

In the city of Slavutych, about 3,000 mourners raised candles at exactly 1:24 a.m.--the moment when Chernobyl staff lost control of the reactor 10 years ago--for a moment of silence.

The city was built in the northern Ukraine wetlands after the accident to house plant workers just outside the exclusion zone surrounding the plant.

At the plant itself, 90 miles north of Kiev, hundreds stood in silence to remember their dead colleagues.

Ukraine says 4,300 people died as a direct result of the accident and that many of the 350,000 cleanup workers are now ill. Millions were affected, mostly in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.

In Belarus, downwind from the blast and worst hit by the fallout, dozens of people were hurt in clashes with police Friday when at least 40,000 nationalists in the capital, Minsk, turned the anniversary into a mass display of outrage against President Alexander G. Lukashenko’s pro-Russian policies.