TALLINN. May 23 (Interfax) - The Estonian nongovernmental organization Meie Nursipalu (Our Nursipalu) has filed a complaint with the Tallinn Administrative Court against the government's plans to expand a NATO training range located in the southern part of the country.
"It is unacceptable for the government to seek to hastily bulldoze a major expansion of a military ground, which directly affects the living environment of around 30,000 people, without any analysis of its effects and without the people's opinion taken into account," the Louna-Eesti Postimees newspaper quoted Maarika Niidumaa, a member of the NGO's board, as saying on Tuesday.
In early May, Nursipalu residents sent a letter to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to say that the plans to expand the range are "illegitimate, ignore democratic society rules, and are being hastened without any mandatory assessment of their environmental and socioeconomic consequences."
The Estonian government in May approved legislation on the urgent expansion of the 3,000-hectare range in Nursipalu to over 9,000 hectares.