ANDRIA HALL, CNN ANCHOR: Serbia says it will take legal action against those responsible for a cyanide spill that contaminated Eastern European waterways. The poison devastated the Tisza River, and some say it will be years before the river can sustain life again. CNN's Lisa Gurevitch has more.</s>LISA GUREVITCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The poison is invisible to the naked eye, its victims are not. Hundreds of dead fish are now floating to the surface of the mighty Danube River in Yugoslavia, and birds who feed on the fish also are dying. The spill originated in Romania on January 30, when a retaining dam at a gold mine overflowed, sending deadly cyanide into connecting streams. The mining operation uses cyanide to separate gold from rock and ore. Once it hit the water, the poison flowed west into the Tisza River in Hungary, leaving a trail of dead fish in its wake.</s>BRANISLAV BRAMIC, SERBIAN ENVIRONMENT MINISTER (through translator): The Tisza River has been killed, not even bacteria has survived. It is astonishing that somebody could let something like this happen.</s>GUREVITCH: Serbia blames Romania for the disaster, and is now demanding compensation at an international court. Romanian officials insist reports about the ecological damage are being exaggerated. By the time the spill reached the connecting Danube River, the huge volume of water diluted the cyanide, reducing it to well below lethal levels, but as fishermen spared dead fish from the Danube, it is clear, the affects of the disaster are likely to stay with them for sometime to come.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): People stopped buying fish last month, I don't know what we will do.</s>GUREVITCH: Lisa Gurevitch, CNN.
Serbia Says it Will Take Legal Action Over Contamination of Danube River