France unlikely to back treaty

Press, 12 August 1985, Page 4

France unlikely to back treaty

PA Auckland France is unlikely to endorse parts of the new South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty which would end its nuclear weapons tests at Mururoa Atoll, says the Prime Minister. In his first comment on the treaty since returning from the South Pacific Forum, Mr Lange said critics of the document should recall that “you don’t run before you walk.”

France and other nuclear nations with interests in the South Pacific are to be asked to endorse the treaty, which bans a wide range of nuclear activities in the region.

France, the only country testing nuclear weapons in the area, has repeatedly refused to end its underground tests. Officials in Paris have said the tests will continue at least until the year 2000. Mr Lange acknowledged

that France was not about to change its mind. While France might agree not to dump nuclear wastes or store weapons in the region “it would be surprising if it readily surrendered its testing programme of Mururoa.”

He said the United States would definitely comply. “For its political rasons it has dismissed the treaty as innocuous and it could scarcely now describe it was a treaty that it ought not to subscribe to,” Mr Lange said. Mr Lange said he did not know why Father Walter Lini had condemned the treaty as impractical, but he believed the former French territory eventually would adopt it.

Father Lini’s exasperation that the treaty did not halt the arms race was understandable. “But as far as I’m concerned, you don’t run before you walk,” said Mr Lange.