LVIV, July 20 – Ukraine will need three to four days to finish cleanup of the area damaged by the crash of the train carrying hazardous chemicals, President Viktor Yushchenko said Friday.

Yushchenko suspended his vacation in Crimea on Friday to visit the site of the crash near Lviv amid concerns over conflicting reports on the impact of the crash on the people living nearby.

“In three to four days a period will be put in cleaning up the consequences of this disaster,” Yushchenko said.

Yushchenko, joined by top security and government officials, visited the site and local hospital to check those under treatment for symptoms blamed on a toxic cloud released after the crash.

At least 143 people were hospitalized in the region for the symptoms blamed on the cloud formed by burning yellow phosphorous after the crash. The number of patients, including 43 children, began growing rapidly on Wednesday, two days after the crash.

Chemical warfare troops and emergency ministry personnel have been cleaning up the area since Tuesday, but government officials have been making contradictory statements over the potential affect of the accident.

The reports by senior government officials ranged from comparing the accident to the Chornobyl nuclear disaster to assurances that the impact of the crash was not significant. Yushchenko called a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council, the top security body, at his residence in Crimea to review the accident and its impact on the environment.

First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who joined the meeting, said: “Now, an objective review of the situation has taken place. The government pledges to provide trustworthy information on what has happened.”

Azarov said: “The scale of the accident and the scale of its consequences have been exaggerated from the beginning.”

The train, carrying yellow phosphorous from Kazakhstan to Poland, crashed at 4:55 p.m. in the Lviv region on Monday, while six rail tanks had caught fire, spewing a toxic cloud over an area of 90 sq km, according to the emergency ministry.

Following the crash, the Yushchenko office accused Transportation Minister Mykola Rudkovskiy of “incompetence” and called for his resignation. This is the second train crash since Rudkovskiy took over the ministry 12 months ago.

Meanwhile, Viktor Bondar, a deputy chief of staff at the Yushchenko office and a former transportation minister, said the crash was probably caused by railroad personnel’s failure to follow safety requirements for transportation of hazardous cargo.

Bondar said the phosphorous, a flammable chemical, should have been transported during nighttime to avoid direct exposure to the sun during the daytime, which may have led to the fire.

Also, he said that pressure-regulating equipment on some of the rail tanks carrying the phosphorus had been apparently manipulated, which could have contributed to the accident. He said such tanks should not have been allowed on Ukrainian territory in the first place. (nr/ez)