Bosnia’s Foreign Affairs Minister said on Sunday that he will raise to issue of Croatia planning to dump its radioactive waste at Bosnia’s border at an upcoming International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conference.

The conference will take place in Vienna, Austria, on Monday.

Bosnia requested in March that Croatia refrains from using Trgovska Gora, an area near the border between the two countries, to store radioactive and nuclear waste and that it finds another adequate area within its own territory to do so.

Trgovska Gora is located just north of the border, near the Bosnian town of Novi Grad. Croatia adopted strategic documents at the end of last year which name that area as a potential location for dumping nuclear waste.

This information caused concern among residents of Novi Grad, who told N1 in November last year the decision was “scandalous.” It has been estimated that dumping the waste at Trgovska Gora would directly endanger the livelihood of several hundreds of thousands of people living around the Una river. 

“We will once again clearly send a message that we cannot allow for the radioactive waste to be dumped at the Bosnian border,” Crnadak said, adding that all levels of government in Bosnia are cooperating on the issue.

He also announced he would discuss the issue on Monday with the mayor of Novi Grad, Miroslav Drljaca, as well as with the Ecology Minister of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) region, Srebrenka Golic.

The Foreign Affairs Minister told reporters at a press conference in Banja Luka that he believes Croatia will be pressured into considering another location to dump its waste, adding that the country has not yet definitely decided what to do.