'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)