FRENCH BOMB

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28987, 31 August 1959, Page 11

FRENCH BOMB

No Ban On rp i lest (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) PARIS, August 29. French officials said today that France will not consider herself bound to cancel her planned nuclear test explosions in the Sahara as as result of the Russian decision, announced yesterday, to prolong the existing voluntary ban against such tests.

The officials pointed out the French Government has repeatedly made it clear that, before an agreement at the Geneva conference for the prohibition of atomic test explosions, France would consider herself entirely free to pursue her preparation for the Sahara explosion of a plutonium bomb. For the time being, no official comment will be made on the Russian decision.

A British Foreign Office spokesman said in London today that it was completely untrue to state that it was the Western Powers that were holding up the conclusion of an agreement to discontinue nuclear weapon tests. The spokesman, who was commenting on yesterday’s Soviet declaration, said: "What the world needs and what we wiU continue to work for in the negotiations at Geneva and elsewhere is an effective control system which will give a real assurance that pledges, such as that just announced by the Soviet Government, are in fact being fulfilled.” The East German Government has now joined the protest of African States against the French plans to carry out atomic bomb tests in the Sahara, British United Press reported from Berlin. In Notes to Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Arab Republic and the “provisional government of Algeria” in Cairo, the East German Government, in announcing its stand, also accused the West German Government of “financially and taking part in the plans for the French tests.