MOSCOW, January 17 (RIA Novosti) - Russian and Chinese ecologists and environmentalists gathered in Moscow Tuesday to discuss last November's explosion at a chemicals plant in China's northeast, but their assessments of the accident's aftermath and of how it had been handled proved divergent.

Experts from China claimed the country's authorities had taken all the necessary measures to reduce the environmental impact of the November 13 blast, which sent benzene and other toxic substances spilling into the Songhua River, which feeds into Russia's Amur, and said that Beijing had informed Moscow about the disaster and its potential fallout in good time. They said water from both rivers was now safe to drink and that local fish had not been poisoned by the slick. According to Chinese figures, the current concentration of nitrobenzene sediments from melting ice in the Amur estuary is just 0.000031mm per liter.

Russian experts said the concentration of deadly toxins in the Amur River was above safety levels and that there was still a lot to be done to minimize the risks to the public's health and the ecosystem in Khabarovsk and other regions close to the Chinese-Russian border.

Oleg Mitvol, deputy chief of Russia's Federal Natural Resources Service, said Russian specialists would continue closely monitoring aquatic and bio-resources in the Amur River and the Sea of Okhotsk through 2006. He said Beijing seemed to be playing down the actual scale of the November 13 blast, which, according to Russian figures, had released some 100 metric tons of chemicals, causing both water and air contamination.

According to Russian parliament member Alexei Mitrofanov, as many as 20 million people in northeastern China had suffered from the hazardous effects of the explosion and local authorities had released a public warning to keep windows in residential buildings in the area tightly shut following the accident. Mitrofanov called for stricter control over the operations of industrial enterprises in China and accused Chinese authorities of trying to cover up environmental problems.