Attack on ship work of foreign agents?

Press, 13 July 1985, Page 9

Attack on ship work of foreign agents?

A Christchurch peace campaigner tfynks that the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior peace ship on Wednesday night may have been the work of agents of a foreign Power. Mr Larry Ross, secretary of the Nuclear-Free Zone Committee, said that the bombing of the ship in Auckland came only a day after the Sydney office of Union Carbide was bombed. Union Carbide is the multinational company which owns the chemical plant in Bhopal, India, where a gas leak caused hundreds of deaths. On the same day as the Sydney bombing and only a day before the Rainbow Warrior was bombed, Mr Ross received a circular from an unknown organisation calling itself “The Peace Conquerors,” with the title repeated in French. The circular describing itself as a manifesto, pro-

claimed that violence was a justifiable means to the end of securing world peace and a clean environment. Peace groups have distanced themselves from the Peace Conquerors, which first surfaced in Europe about a month ago, when it issued a statement saying it was responsible for a bombing incident. It claimed in Europe that it supported Greenpeace, the international environmental organisation, but Greenpeace quickly dissociated itself from the organisation and its methods. Mr Ross said that he sent the circular to the Prime Minister, Mr Lange asking him to pass it on to the Security Intelligence Service. He said he believed The Peace Conquerors was established by an Intelligence agency of a foreign country with the aim of masquerading as a peace organisation

in order to discredit the peace movement. The circular sent to Mr Ross was apparently the same as one sent to the Australian Associated Press in Sydney on the morning of the attack on Union Carbide, he said. Mr Ross said that the committee would co-operate in every way with the S.I.S. to put down terrorism directed at New Zealand and the nuclear-free peace movement. The committee did not believe in the existence of The Peace Conquerors as it portrayed itself, it was a typical covert action to direct suspicion against people trying to build a nuclear-free world. The circular by The Peace Conquerors says that it is an independent and activist alliance which condemns all imperialism and all forms of oppression. “Frustrated by the obvi-

ous naivety and inefficiency of the existing movements, who pretend to the same ideals and who have given help and support, we have decided that our only option open to be able to achieve our goals is illegality. Only violence applied in a precise and selective way can lead to the triumph of world peace,” says the circular. A Christchurch organisation which campaigns in a peaceful and educational way against excessive intrusion of multi-national involvement in New Zealand affairs is the Campaign Against Foreign Control in New Zealand. Its secretary, Mr Murray Horton, said last evening that he had never heard of The Peace Conquerors. He agreed with Mr Ross that it was conceivable that the organisation was a front for' a foreign intelligence agency trying to discredit the peace movement.