I was thinking about this last night and it occurred to me that the Ministry of Environment had no choice but to deny the permit. First you are in an environmental sensitive area where any disturbances is going to affect the area for years and years. The area is quite significiant in that most of the rainfall gets washed into rivers that are used for drinking water. Since I have heard that the Minister can be personally liable for any damage caused, I could understand the denial. Why would you take liability if you had no gain in the project. Thus denying the project puts the decision on someone elses shoulders who is not personally liable. This also could be the reason why so few project go through the ministry. This also makes sense in the denial of both projects, since why take the liablity for one and not the other if they are both risky to the environment.

The other question is why have a low level employee give out the denials. This approach makes one immediately thinks that she does not want to take responsiblity for this decision.

The only concern I have on the negative right now, is why is the national guard and the local police force ordered to take Las Cristinas from Crystallex. This is very distrubing. However, I have not heard the same situation for GRZ. I see this in two way. One the national guard is seizing control of Las Cristinas end of story, or the government thinks there will be cival unrest and does not want these matters dealt with by KRY. I am leaning to the latter since the government made the statement of Crystallex employees potentially inducing violence.

JMHO