A cyanide spill is expected to flow into the river Danube early on Sunday, two weeks after it first flooded out of a Romanian gold mine.

About 100,000 cubic metres (3.5m cubic feet) of the lethal chemical have been travelling down the river Tisza, a tributary of the Danube, first through Hungary and then northern Yugoslavia.

The spill originated in north-west Romania, near the border town of Oradea, where a dam at the Baia Mare goldmine overflowed. The polluted water is moving at about 2.5mph.

Up to 100 tonnes of fish have been poisoned. Alarm has spread as far south as the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, which lies on the Danube, some 130km (80 miles) to the south.

The authorities in Hungary and Yugoslavia are reported to have detected a drop in the cyanide concentration, as the chemical becomes further diluted, but levels are still highly dangerous.

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On Friday night, according to Yugoslavia's official news agency Tanjug, the cyanide level dropped to 1.1mg per litre - still 11 times the maximum tolerable amount - at the Hungarian border town of Szeged.

The Tisza is now said to be almost completely dead and a ban on the consumption of fish or drinking water is in place.

Zoltna Illes, president of the Hungarian parliament's environment committee, said: "It is as if a neutron bomb had been detonated.

"All the living organisms have been destroyed. It is the worst ecological disaster in central Europe since Chernobyl in 1986."

Romanian officials and the Australian owners of the mine have played down the link between the dead fish and the cyanide, which is used to clean extracted gold.

Brett Montgomery, chairman of Perth-based Australia Esmeralda Exploration, called reports of environmental catastrophe a "gross exaggeration".

Compensation

Hungary has demanded compensation for the spill, which the Romanian Government has said the mine's owners would have to pay.

A joint commission of Hungarian and Romanian experts will assess the damage.

However, Mr Montgomery said he did not expect any successful compensation claims arising from the incident.

"To date we have no evidence to suggest that reports of dead fish in Hungary, some 75km from the company's plant in Romania, are attributable to the overflow.

"These claims cause me considerable scepticism. It is most unlikely that given the volume of water and the distance travelled the cyanide levels would be such to cause poisoning.

"In fact it's quite possible that a number of unrelated events could be responsible."

On Saturday, hundreds of Hungarians mourned the "dead Tisza", throwing flowers in the water, lighting candles and carrying black flags.

The cyanide spill adds to the ecological strain on Yugoslavia following pollution caused by last year's Nato strikes on oil refineries and factories.

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