'Japan's plutonium ship won't pass through Indonesian waters'

'Japan's plutonium ship won't pass through Indonesian waters'

JAKARTA (JP)): The Japanese government has guaranteed that the
plutonium-laden ship, Pacific Pintail, will not pass through
Indonesian waters on its way to Japan, the Indonesian foreign
ministry disclosed yesterday.

The ministry of foreign affairs' director general of
information, Irawan Abidin, said the guarantee was given through
the Japanese embassy here in Jakarta.

"We have received a guarantee that the ship will not pass
through our waters," he said.

The Pacific Pintail left Cherbourg harbor, France, on
Thursday, carrying some 13.7 tons of reprocessed nuclear waste.

This is the second shipment of nuclear waste to Japan in the
past two-years, out of what is expected to be a total of 20
shipments over the next 10 years. The first shipment was
successfully transported by the ship Akatsuki Maru in 1993.

As was with the Akatsuki Maru, the Pacific Pintail's route has
been kept secret.

The international environmental group Greenpeace has said that
it is quite likely that the ship will pass through Indonesian
waters; either through the Straits of Lombok or through the
Straits of Malacca, which are administered jointly by Indonesia,
Singapore and Malaysia.

The Straits of Malacca remain one of the busiest and most
accident prone seaways in the world.

Irawan told The Jakarta Post that he expected the Japanese
government would also have been in communication with Indonesia's
neighbors concerning the shipment.

Irawan said yesterday he had been told that the Pacific
Pintail would not pass through any sea lanes in Southeast Asia.

He speculated that the Pacific Pintail's route would be
similar to that of the Akatsuki Maru which took a two-month
journey around the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean and
around Australia, before heading north to Japan.

Tokyo's guarantee averted the issuance by Jakarta of a strong
statement, a copy of which has been obtained by the Post. The
statement objects vehemently to such a dangerous shipment passing
through Indonesian territorial waters.

A number of local environmental groups had earlier feared that
the silence on the part of the government regarding the
controversial plutonium shipment was a signal that Indonesia
might have given its consent to the freighter passing through its
waters. (mds)