Referendum to be held on tests

Press, 3 August 1985, Page 10

Referendum to be held on tests

NZPA-AAP Rarotonga

French Polynesia will hold a referendum on nuclear testing in the near future, its President, Mr Gaston Flosse, said yesterday.

A motion to establish the referendum would be put at the next session of the Territorial Assembly in November, said Mr Flosse. He expected that the motion would be passed without difficulty because it was favoured by virtually all political parties in the territory. The referendum is likely to be conducted without the approval of the French Government, which Mr Flosse said had made no response to the territory’s request for a referendum last year.

Without endorsement from Paris the referendum would have an uncertain legal status because under the territorial constitution France retains control of defence and the territory’s legal and electoral systems. French Polynesia, one of three French territories in the Pacific, has hosted the nuclear test programme at Mururoa Atoll since 1966.

Mr Flosse was speaking in Rarotonga before the opening of next week’s South Pacific Forum, for which his administration is applying for observer status under the sponsorship of the

host Government of the Cook Islands. The Forum is the annual meeting of the heads of Government of the 13 independent and internally selfgoverning nations of the region. The French Pacific territories are not members of the Forum and conference sources said the applications for observer status by French Polynesia and F.L.N.K.S. independence front in New Caledonia were highly unlikely to succeed.

The Forum has traditionally expressed strong opposition to the nuclear testing programme and this year is expected to adopt an Australian initiative to declare the South Pacific a nuclearfree zone.

Mr Flosse, who returned to Papeete last week-end after consultations with Government officials in Paris, said he would continue to ask the French Government to hold a referendum on the tests.

Speaking through an interpreter he said, “If the central Government still refuses to give any answer we will go ahead and organise our own referendum. “I am afraid it will not be taken into proper consideration (by Paris) but we wish to know the opinion of the people of French Polynesia.”