NUCLEAR TESTS Wider protest urged

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33253, 16 June 1973, Page 9

NUCLEAR TESTS Wider protest urged

(By

ELSIE LOCKE)

On June 8, in the issue of “The Press’’ which reported the refusal of New Zealand Post Office workers to handle French mail and the declaration of the Presbyterian Church of the New Hebrides that French nuclear testing was “a criminal action,” it was also recorded that a one-megaton flbomb had been detonated in Nevada.

It was No. 6 in this year’s underground testing in the United States, and No. 254 since the Partial Test-Ban Treaty of 1963. As with most of the previous 253 examples, this news has passed without special comment or protest. Why have we reached such a peak of indignation about the French activities and accepted with calm the continuing testing of nuclear weapons by the United States and the U.S.S.R.?

All of these (and China’s tests too) are directed towards the capability for atroocities which would make Hitler’s gas chambers look like toys. TWO REASONS For Mururoa, we have two “local” reasons. First, the discharge of radio-active material into the atmosphere: a pollution, health and environment question. Second, the assertion by a European nation of its power to utilise the South Pacific region over the objections of the peoples who live here, including the French Polynesians: a human rights question. By far the most important question is not localised. It is the war question. These things being tested are not nucleii; they are weapons. No more nations have yet "gone nuclear” since the NonProliferation Treaty of 1968. It was widely said by statesmen who accepted this restraint that its viability would depend on the readiness of the two super-powers, already armed with massive "over-kill,” to scale down their arsenals and take positive steps towards disarmament. The rest of the world cannot indefinitely grant them monopoly giving them an unajustifiable advantage in throwing their weight around —a point made by China in defence of its own nuclear weaponry. NO SCALING DOWN There has been no scaling down. Last year there was a limited S.A.L.T. agreement between the United States and the U.S.S.R.,but it was not distarmament it was rather a money-saving arrangement to aviod expensive programmes which would leave both of them no more advanced in their pursuit of mutual deterrence. Both have continued refining their weapons by the

i use of underground nuclear tests, and stockpiling these weapons and methods of delivering them. The real danger to the world, compared with which the effects of. the Mururoa tests would be “peanuts”, has kept growing. French spokesmen have accused New Zealand and Australia of hypocrisy in that our Governments condoned and supported atmospheric [tests in the Pacific when the United States and Great Britain were responsible.

As to their "invasion” of the Pacific, France does not possess the remote, barren, barely populated regions which are used for their weapon testing by the United States, U.S.S.R. and China. If wey say that nuclear testing os acceptable if done on home' ground, we are really saying it is accept able for nations with a large square mileage but not for those whose homelands are small. New Zealand and Australia can only present an honest front about nuclear weapons testing if we oppose the lot. We have in, recent years, been pressing the United Nations for a comprehensive ban on all nuclear tests, under ground and above ground alike. END TO TESTS N. V. Farrell, speaking on the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, said “an end to ail nuclear tests would be a logical corollary to an agreement.”

J. V. Scott in 1970 urged the highest priority to drawing up a comprehensive treaty. Last October New Zealand was one of thirteen sponsors for a draft resolution covering all testing, with the reminder that the Partial TestBan Treaty bound its parties to move on to an agreement which would not be partial, but complete. This is our diplomatic position, but it lacks punch because so few people know or think about it. VERBAL OBJECTIONS New Zealand made only verbal objections to the Mururoa tests until the population became really stirred up. Since then we have had action on both government and volunteer levels. Is it not time to widen our sights? We could remind ourselves that the end result of nuclear weapon testing is not just strontium-90 in the bones and contamination of fish and farm produce; but sooner or later a senseless war, without hope of “victory” for any nation, wiui destruction unlimited in time and space, sparing no man or his environment wherever they may be.