China Orders Water Restored

Premier Wen Jiabao visited Harbin in China's northeast on Saturday and ordered local leaders to restore running water to 3.8 million people who spent a fourth day without supplies after a benzene spill in a nearby river.

Meanwhile, Beijing apologized to Moscow for the toxic chemicals flowing toward Russia.

The government said Harbin's water system, shut down Tuesday after a chemical plant explosion spewed benzene into the Songhua River, wouldn't resume service until late Sunday night, a full day later than earlier planned.

"We cannot allow even a single person not to have water," Wen told local leaders, state television reported on its national evening newscast. He told them to show "a high degree of responsibility" toward the public.

Also Saturday, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing issued an unusual public apology to Moscow's ambassador for any damage caused when the poisonous slick flows across the border into Russia's Far East.

Beijing's public show of care and contrition was almost unprecedented, and represented an effort to repair its damaged standing with both China's public and Moscow, a key diplomatic partner.

Wen promised to "conscientiously investigate the reasons and responsibility for the accident," said a report on the state television national evening news.

Beijing has sent investigators to Harbin and promised to punish officials responsible for the disaster. Communist Party officials and the state-owned oil company whose subsidiary runs the chemical plant already have apologized.

The disaster began with a Nov. 13 explosion at a chemical plant in Jilin, a city about 120 miles southeast of Harbin. Five people were killed and 10,000 evacuated.

But it was only this week that Beijing announced that the Songhua was poisoned with about 100 tons of benzene, a potentially cancer-causing chemical used in detergents and plastics. Russian officials complained that China failed to tell them enough about the poison flowing toward the border city of Khabarovsk.

The spill is an embarrassment to President Hu Jintao's government, which has made a priority of repairing environmental damage from 25 years of sizzling economic growth and of looking after ordinary Chinese.

The foreign minister's apology to Russian Ambassador Sergei Razov was reported on the China Central Television evening news, a rare step for the newscast, which usually carries only positive reports on China's foreign relations.

"Li Zhaoxing expressed his sincere apology on behalf of the Chinese government for the possible harm that this major environmental pollution incident could bring to the Russian people downstream," the report said.

Razov urged Li to provide full information about the toxic spill, according to Russia's ITAR-Tass and RIA Novosti news agencies.

Razov said the response to the accident would have been more efficient if China had informed Russia about it sooner, the reports said, adding that Li offered China's assistance to help deal with the spill's consequences.

In Khabarovsk, Russian authorities were preparing plans including a shutdown of water systems in cities that drink from the river.

Earlier Saturday, Wen visited the Harbin No. 3 Water Filtration Plant, where 300 paramilitary police were delivering part of the 1,400 tons of activated carbon sent to the city for water filtration once the Songhua is deemed safe to use.

"Your work now is work to protect the safety of the masses' drinking water. Thank you, everyone!" Wen told the troops outside the plant, who cheered. "Make the masses' water completely safe, and we must not allow the masses to be short of water."

CBS News Asia correspondent Barry Petersen reports it is a disaster of double proportions for Chinese leaders – first an environmental nightmare, and second a rare chance for China docile press to launch a major attack on the country's leadership.

Government newspapers criticized the handling of the disaster. The government failed to detect the spill of benzene – possibly the world's largest — for several days, and Harbin city leaders said this week they were shutting down its water system without initially telling the public why.

The Beijing-based China Youth Daily published a detailed list of official missteps and confusion.

"If information is not given in a timely, accurate and transparent manner, it will leave room for rumors to spread," it said.

Some cities, like Shui Tou, have paid a high environmental price for China's economic success, and the Chinese do not want some stories of pollution and health problems made public, reports Petersen.

On Saturday, residents of Harbin stood in line in sunny but subfreezing weather to fill buckets and teakettles with water from trucks sent by the city government and state companies.