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"We cannot just sit for discussions behind closed doors while the sandstorms have raged outside for more than ten days," Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said at a national conference on environmental protection.

"Besides climatic factors it displays the critical environmental situation we're facing," Wen said of Beijing being enveloped in a fine yellow dust.

While addressing the conference held over Monday and Tuesday, Wen said China required to be on high alert to fight back against worsening environmental pollution and ecological deterioration in some regions. Protection of the environment had to be given higher priority in the drive for national modernization.

The major targets on environmental protection during the recently completed 10th Five-Year Plan (2000-2005) had not been achieved as scheduled and new problems had emerged, Wen said.

China had set a target of cutting discharges of sulphur dioxide by 10 percent in 2000-2005. It set the same target for reducing emissions of carbon monoxide but only succeeded in securing a 2 percent cut, according to the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).

"Lack of awareness, insufficient planning and a weak legal framework can be blamed for the severe environmental pollution in the country," Wen noted.

According to the recently adopted 11th Five-Year Guidelines (2006-2010) energy consumption in terms of per capita GDP growth should be cut by 20 percent, major pollutants reduced by 10 percent and forest coverage should increase from the current level of 18.2 percent to 20 percent, he said.

The Premier has set out four priorities for current and future environmental protection. These include improving water conservation, controlling atmospheric and soil pollution, enhancing protection of the national ecology, re-adjusting the economic structure and boosting the environmental technology and protection industry.

SEPA reported 45 other pollution incidents in the two and a half months after the Songhua River spill last November which threatened the water supplies of four million people in the city of Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

Another incident listed by the administration was a cadmium spill along the Beijiang River in south China's Guangdong Province that also threatened drinking and agricultural water supplies.

Other major water pollution incidents included chemical spills along northeast China's Hun River, central China's Hunan's Xiangjiang River and a diesel spill along the Yellow River in Henan Province as well as oil contamination of Ganjiang River in central China's Jiangxi Province.

Wen ordered local governments on Monday to release information on energy consumption and pollutant emissions every six months, set plans to control discharges and step up the environmental assessments of proposed construction projects.

Protective policies on the exploitation of resources should be put in place and legal and supervisory systems established, acknowledged Wen. He also urged those in authority to allocate more money and raise public awareness of environmental protection issues.

(Xinhua News Agency April 19, 2006)