Sahara A-Test In Spite Of U.N. Vote

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29051, 13 November 1959, Page 13

Sahara A-Test In Spite Of U.N. Vote

(Rec. 11 p.m.) NEW YORK, November 12. . The United Nations Main Political Committee is expected to vote tonight on a 22nation African-Asian resolution seeking to block France’s proposed atomic tests in the Sahara. But whatever the outcome of the vote, France is not expected to abandon her test plans. -

The sponsoring delegations are confident of a clear victory in the vote, which places France’s allies —particularly Britain and the United States—in a dilemma. Yesterday, the brother of the President of Guinea, Mr Ismail Toure, clashed bitterly with the French delegate, Mr Jules Moch. He accused Mr Moch of bringing along two black Africans in his luggage who were puppets of France.

Mr Toure, the Guinea Minister of Public Works, was referring to the presence in the French delegation of the President of Madagascar (Mr Philibert Tsiranana) and the Premier of the Republic of the Ivory Coast (Mr Felix Houphouet-Boigny). Mr Moch, earlier had said that

both of these African leaders agreed with France in its decision to explode an atomic bomb in the Sahara, to which Guinea and other independent African States strongly object. The French delegate heatedly rejoined that he would not allow the term “puppet” to be used. Mr Toure retorted that if the French delegate did not want the word used France should not “create puppets in Africa.” It was the second time in three days that Mr Moch, France’s veteran disarmament negotiator, had been provoked into angry exchanges with another delegate during the crucial Sahara tests debate.

On Monday, after hearing the Saudi Arabian representative (Mr Ahmad Shukairy) speak of French “glory mania,” Mr Moch described that delegate as a “professional in incitement, bad taste and insults.”

Today, Mr Toure delivered a trenchant attack on colonialism on similar lines to that made in the General Assembly last week by the President of Guinea (Mr Sekou Toure), who now is in London for a State visit

The Guinea delegate said at one point that he wondered whether France was “following the path of Fascism” by continuing its plans to explode a bomb in the Sahara in the face of African protests.