On terrorism

I read with amazement the letter from the French Ambassador regarding his country's response to the acts of terrorism carried out by Algerian fundamentalist Moslem agents.

I would like to remind the ambassador that his own government had no hesitation in carrying out just such an act against my country, resulting in death, in 1981. As subsequently proven in the World Court, the French Government had no hesitation in sending at least two teams of its agents into New Zealand, infiltrating the Greenpeace organization and finally exploding a bomb aboard the ship "Rainbow Warrior," killing a member of the crew, leaving his wife a widow and his two children fatherless. New Zealand will never forget this.

Let the world remember that France, with its Pacific territories, remains a colonial power, and further, intends to remain one into the twenty-first century. Is this democratic?

Is this not, in itself, an act of terrorism?

In my view France has been living in a glass house for a long time. The French Ambassador should understand that merely because he himself is currently residing outside Metropolitan France he still cannot afford the luxury of throwing stones.

The irony of the French Foreign Minister speaking of dialog and condemning terrorism and repression rings as a bitter sound to the people of the Pacific, twelve thousand miles from Europe, where France still postures as an imperialist bully, not a concerned neighbor.

WARRON CONROY

Jakarta