Protesters may be shot

Press, 3 November 1983, Page 10

Protesters may be shot

NZPA London The British Government yesterday warned groups protesting against the deployment of cruise missiles that, under extreme circumstances, soldiers might shoot people who broke into nuclear weapons bases. The Defence Secretary, Mr Michael Heseltine, said in a television interview that troops could use firearms if intruders entered the most heavily guarded areas.

“It is my duty to make it clear that there are extreme circumstances where people could be at risk,” Mr Heseltine said. Guards would have to consider the possibility that seeming protesters were terrorists in disguise.

“The difficulty is that you can’t tell the difference between a terrorist and a peace protester if the terrorist has taken the trouble to make himself look like one,” he said. The Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, and Mr

Heseltine cautioned the demonstrators during a House of Commons session yesterday shortly after protesters rushed the perimeter fence at the Greenham Common air base, thinking that a just-landed Galaxy transport plane had flown in the first missiles to Britain. Mr Heseltine told the House that only missile equipment had* come in. Soldiers were later seen unloading a van with antennae fixed to it. In the last few days some 200 members of the “women’s peace camp” at Greenham Common have been arrested in protests that included cutting through the chain-link fence and rushing on to taxiways. On Monday the British Army rushed paratroopers to the base, west of London, and 12 van-loads of police bolstered the security presence outside the fence. In Parliament an Opposition Labour member chal-

lenged Mr Heseltine to give assurances that troops would not shoot protesters. But Mr Heseltine replied heatedly: ‘T categorically will give no such assurance.”

As Labour members shouted at him, Mr Heseltine went on: “It has been the absolute duty of all governments to defend the nuclear weapons of this country and all military bases in this country. To suggest that we abandon this policy is reckless.” Minutes later Mrs Thatcher was asked the same question and replied: “This Government, as all others have done, will defend bases and defend installations in the same way as has been done by previous governments. It is the duty of this Government to -defend the installations.” The Americans and the bunkers where the missiles would be garaged are behind several security zones, protected by British police, soldiers, and Royal Air

Force Regiment guards, officials said.

A Defence Ministry spokesman said that guidelines governing orders to shoot had been laid down in long-standing rules of engagement that had been reviewed in detail between the British and American governments. The spokesman emphasised that genuine demonstrators ran the risk of being taken for saboteurs orr terrorists. “Mr Heseltine is worried that those who are demonstrating — but more particularly those who might use a cover of demonstrating — could pose a threat to themselves and to the weapons,” she said. LabouPs defence spokesman, John Silkin, attacked Mr Heseltine: “To talk of shooting women when you do not even know whether they constitute any danger whatever is the sort of hysteria one expects from this Secretary of ... Defence.”

Monsignor Bruce Kent,

the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Britain’s main anti-nuclear group, said that the Government’s position was “brutal and shocking.” “The real criminals are not these courageous, unarmed women but the politicians who are willing to use. missiles 15 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb on the population of Europe, East or West,” he said.

The first cruise missiles are expected in Britain within three weeks as the N.A.T.O. alliance keeps to its pledge to have the missiles operational by December 31 if there is no agreement on arms limitations at United States-Soviet talks in Geneva.

N.A.T.O. plans to put 572 cruise and Pershing-2 medium-range missiles in Britain, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium over the next five years.