Town could volunteer to be missile base

Press, 6 August 1983, Page 16

Town could volunteer to be missile base

By

ETHAN BRONNER,

of Reuter, in Vresse-sur-Semois, Belgium

This small town in southern Belgium, set in the Ardennes Hills near France, is so desperate for jobs that it is thinking of volunteering as a site for new American nuclear weapons. Nearly 300 other Belgium towns have declared themselves ‘nuclearfree zones,” but the Mayor’s advisory board here has passed a resolution suggesting Vresse as the perfect place for the 48 cruise missiles due to be sited in Belgium if no progress is made at arms talks in Geneva in the coming months.

The startling motion, pushed through by Mayor Urbain Maidague and due to go before the full town council for a second time, has set this normally tranquil and splendidly picturesque town of under 3000 abuzz.

“The Mayor has gone soft in the head,” commented Huguette Braibant, who with her husband runs the Hotel du Vai Fleuri. Husband Paul sees the idea as “an original way to bring employment to Vresse.”

The Mayor’s publicity effort may not bring the missiles to this small community, and defence officials will not say whether Vresse would be an appropriate site. Mr Maidague says the town needs work and that the missiles would provide it. “No industry, no agriculture, just tourists,” Mr Maidague, aged 77, complains. “How do you want us to keep young people here if thfje is no work, no enterprise of

any kind?” On fields where tobacco once grew in abundance, today only tents and campers sprout up along the Semois River, bringing business to local shopkeepers but little else.

Mr Maidague says that if the cruise missiles were stationed here, there would be work for everyone building houses, feeding the soldiers, and maintaining the site.

“This is not a political statement we’re making. Its purely economic. Many people in Vresse are in favour of it,” he said.

Patrick Leray, aged 21, serving at the Cafe Relais on the town’s main street, did not contradict his Mayor. “Let’s face it, whether the missiles are stationed here or 50 kilometres away makes no difference. If a bomb is dropped we’ll all fry,” he said cheerfully. The missile idea, which Mr Maidague describes as a young idea from an old man, has also met stiff opposition. His first attempt to get it through the town council ended in stalemate. Some townspeople, especially those who earn their living from tourists, worry that if the missiles really were placed in Vresse, visitors would stop coming. “I’m less concerned about the missiles than all the ecologists who will come with them, wreaking havoc, shouting slogans,” Huguette Braibant said. “They’ll drive the tourists away.”

At the moment, Vresse is a quiet place surrounded by forests and many visitors interviewed say they do not want their paradise spoiled. Mr Maidague said he was not worried about tourists and city folk who built second homes here for the summer months.

“I want to provide work for those who live here,” he said. “I’d take fully employed full-time residents rather than visitors any day.” Mr Maidague first came up with the missile idea last year. Rumours were circulating at the time that a West German arms depot 10 kilometres from Vresse was going to close.

The depot employs some 160 locals as drivers, firemen, guards, and cleaners and the prospect of it shutting would mean even more serious unemployment. Mr Maidague thought that rather than closing the depot could become a cruise missile base. The Belgian Defence Ministry says the West Germans are leaving the base in the middle of 1984, but Ulrich Schmidt, commander of the base, said no decision had yet been made on its future.

He declined to say whether it would be easy to install cruise missiles there.

The Defence Ministry says there is little chance of Vresse being chosen as the missile site because four other sites are under study, with Florennes, 65 kilometres south of Brussels, the likeliest