"Non-enforcement and lax enforcement of laws and administrative inactivity are the main targets we must aim at," Xie Zhenhua, director of the State Environmental Protection Agency, was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

"The key problems in environmental law enforcement that the government currently needs to face up to and solve is that some local environment authorities do not exercise their law enforcement duties."

Continued failure to enforce environmental legislation would make it difficult to stem expanding environmental degradation that has made China's air, water and soil pollution some of the worst in the world, he stressed.

"We will strive to realize the general goal of basically stopping the deterioration of China's environment," Xie said.

Meanwhile, Sheng Huaren, vice chairman of the National People's Congress admitted that the 1984 Law on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution had utterly failed, leaving 300 million rural residents without access to safe drinking water, including 190 million drinking contaminated water.

"Last year, water from half the tested sections of China's seven major rivers was undrinkable because of pollution," Sheng was quoted as saying by the China Daily in a report on the law's implementation.

"The water quality of the country's major rivers has continued to worsen."

Sheng urged the government to set detailed goals to prevent water pollution and channel more funds into efforts to stop pollution and soil erosion in the impoverished upper reaches of the country's major rivers.

All rights reserved. � 2004 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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