Russia"s most controversial factory, the...
Last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a resolution excluding the production of pulp, paper and cardboard from the list of operations banned in the Baikal natural territory.
Environmentalists decried the move and are planning to appeal to President Dmitry Medvedev to cancel Putin"s resolution, Kommersant reported.
A public campaign to close or convert the pulp and paper mill, built on the shores of the world"s largest freshwater lake in 1966, became one of the symbols of Glasnost, the "openness" policy proclaimed by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in late 1980s.
It involved the nation"s leading statesmen and literary men and forced the Soviet government to promise a halt to pulp production by 1993.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 delayed the decision, and it was only in October 2008 that the plant switched over to a closed water cycle, preventing the discharge of waste into the lake, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.