Paris gives Beijing nuclear boost

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG (JP): French President Jacques Chirac, in a move which New Zealand has termed "Napoleonic arrogance", has reversed the policy of French President Francois Mitterand and decided to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

In so doing, the newly-installed French leader has come to the aid of China at a moment when Beijing is faced with increased pressure from Japan over its resumption of nuclear testing.

The Japanese government has threatened to reduce grant aid to China in response to its continued nuclear tests. So while the French decision has been greeted with a hail of fierce criticism, particularly from South Pacific states, there has been no condemnation from Beijing, where Chirac's decision is almost certainly a source of quiet satisfaction.

Obviously if Japan now goes ahead and reduces China's grant aid, without making a parallel move against France, Beijing will protest that Tokyo is discriminating against it. Seemingly aware of the position in which it has been placed, Japan used unusually harsh words to condemn Chirac's decision saying that it was "a betrayal of the trust of non-nuclear states".

President Chirac has additionally helped China by announcing that France will conduct eight nuclear tests between now and May 1996, by which time France will be willing to accede to any comprehensive test ban treaty that has been negotiated. This will mean that France has conducted a total of exactly 200 tests since its first one in 1960.

The expectation has been that, after its recent nuclear test in the wake of the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, China was planning four or five more such tests before the test ban came into effect. It remains to be seen whether Beijing will now take advantage of the French decision to increase the number of its planned tests, or will remain content to conduct less tests than France.

Almost certainly France could have opted to conduct its nuclear tests by computer simulation but has not done so. Former President Mitterand resisted military pressure for more tests on the main ground that the international political disadvantages of renewed underground testing outweighed the scientific gains.

Chirac has evidently taken the view that the scientific gains are more important, and accepted the military argument that more nuclear tests are necessary before future computer simulations will be an adequate replacement.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Don McKinnon, interviewed over the BBC World Service, termed the latter argument "hogwash" and said he was "bitterly disappointed" with Chirac's decision.

Chirac has shown "an arrogant disregard for the people of the South Pacific" McKinnon said. "This Napoleonic arrogance, this De Gaulle-like attitude, is too much to stomach". McKinnon ordered the French ambassador to New Zealand out of his office when the ambassador failed to give adequate reasons for the renewed testing.

France will resume its underground nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in the French colony of Polynesia, roughly 1,350 kilometers east southeast of the main French island of Tahiti. Mururoa lies about 1,000 kilometers northwest of the sole remaining British colony in the Pacific, Pitcairn island, peopled by the descendants of the Mutiny on the Bounty.

By coincidence -- or as a result of a leak of information in Paris -- Chirac's decision to resume testing came shortly after Rainbow Warrior Two, a vessel belonging to the environmentalist lobbying group Greenpeace, set sail from New Zealand for Mururoa.

It will be recalled that the first Rainbow Warrior was blown up in a New Zealand port by French intelligence operatives who aimed to forestall the ship sailing to Mururoa to peacefully try and dissuade the French from nuclear testing.

Rainbow Warrior Two has now embarked upon the same mission. Greenpeace activists on board, interviewed by the BBC, say that the atoll under which the French carry out their nuclear tests is already cracked and that there is therefore a risk of radiation leakage from the series of tests now planned.