Australia to take anti-nuclear test campaign to ASEAN
Australia to take anti-nuclear test campaign to ASEAN
SYDNEY (AFP): Australia will use next week's meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Brunei to boost international pressure on France over its decision to resume nuclear testing in the Pacific, officials said yesterday.
Although the issue is not on the agenda for next Tuesday's talks, it will be raised in the 19-member forum and probably during the preceding Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ministerial meeting on Saturday and Sunday.
Foreign Minister Gareth Evans will lead the Australian delegation to the meetings, which are also being attended by France's Minister for European Affairs as head of the European Union (EU) delegation.
The European Union has observer status at the ASEAN ministerial meeting and full membership of the ARF, which has become the major forum for security issues in the region.
An official in Canberra said Australia would be using the meetings to try and get extra support regionally and internationally for an effective comprehensive test ban treaty next year and to increase the pressure on France.
"We will also take the opportunity to gauge the reaction of other countries to the French decision," he said, noting that Australia similarly opposed China's current nuclear test program, although it is conducted inside China.
China is also a member of the ARF along with the seven ASEAN nations and Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, the EU, Japan, Laos, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and -- from July 28 -- Vietnam.
As the international furor continues over France's decision to conduct eight test at Mururoa atoll, a visiting French trade union leader gave his backing here yesterday to a boycott of French products by Australian consumers.
Pierre-Jean Rozet, an executive member of France's largest confederation of unions, the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT), told reporters in Melbourne that French unions also opposed nuclear testing.
"I would like to say that we understand and support the actions taken by Australian unions and consumer groups," Rozet said.
He said he believed the French government had underestimated the strength of opposition to nuclear testing in the South Pacific, citing a recent poll in France showing that 56 percent of workers were opposed to it.
Rozet said when CGT representatives met French government officials last week, they found them very much on the defensive on the issue of nuclear testing.
"It was clear according to the delegation that the president's office was on the defensive because of the international protests," he said.
Local union officials met Rozet to discuss ways in which French and Australian trade unions could cooperate in opposing nuclear testing.
French President Jacques Chirac announced in May that Paris was ending a moratorium on nuclear testing and carrying out the eight underground tests on Mururoa atoll, French Polynesia, between September this year and May 1996.