French Nuclear Force This Year

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30038, 24 January 1963, Page 13

French Nuclear Force This Year

(N.ZJ’A.-Reutev—Copyright) PARIS, January 22. France’s independent nuclear force would be ready by the end of the year, the French Defence Minister (Mr Pierre Messmer) said today. The force would be equipped with atom bombs three times as powerful as those which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He also told a meeting of the Gaullist Paliamentary group that France was several years ahead of its original programme on development of a hydrogen bomb, lobby sources said. France was also several yean ahead on its missile programme. There have been recent unconfirmed reports France might explode tts first hydrogen bomb as early as next month. The original H-bomb and missile programme was due to produce results by 1969 or 1970. Mr Messmer said the nuclear strike force would be equipped with Mirage IV aircraft He said it was hoped France would have 90 Mirage IV supersonic light bombers ready for service by the end of 1965. Mr Messmer reported that the first of the KCI3S jet tanker aeroplanes ordered from the United States would be delivered next August. The tankers are needed to refuel the Mirage IV aeroplanes tn flight. The debate on the defence budget will open tomorrow in the National Assembly. In a radio interview, published today, Mr Messmer suggested that France. Britain and the United States should make a pact to regulate toe technical conditions of using nuclear weapons. He suggested this as an alternative to Integrating the French force toto the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation or a trilateral nuclear force, already rejected by Presiden de Gaulle. He said France had to have her own nuclear force because It was not certain America would always have the “same ideas on Europe’s defence as we da" Early this month toe French weekly, "Minute," repotted that the first French

hydrogen bomb might be exploded in the last week of February in the heart of the Hoggar Desert, some 60 miles north of Tamanrasset in the Sahara. The Armed Forces Ministry refused to comment on the report Sources close to the French Government said on January 7 that France was to begin work this year on constructing a test toise for her future H-bomb in the Gambier Archipelago, about 1100 miles south-east of Tahiti, in the Pacific. Two days later French newspapers reported, France might explode her first Hbomb in the Pacific within two years.