Nuclear tests ‘understandable’

Press, 12 October 1985, Page 8

Nuclear tests ‘understandable’

Wellington reporter The reasons that prompt France to continue nuclear testing in the South Pacific can be understood, according to the former Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon. He told a French Business Council luncheon in Auckland that he would not discuss the deplorable recent events between France and New Zealand. He regarded himself as a friend of France and a friend of its people.

His father had served in France during World War I, while he himself had spent a considerable time on garrison duties in New Caledonia during World War 11. . During that time he had got to know those of French extraction and the Kanaks, and he understood better than most New Zealanders the extraordinarily difficult situation there today.

Sir Robert said he had sympathy for the efforts of the French Government to solve the problems.

“While I cannot condone the continuing programme of nuclear testing which takes place in French Polynesia, I certainly understand the reasons which prompted successive French Governments to wish to acquire these weapons as part of a deterrent force,” he said. So often over the centuries France had experienced invasion across its borders in a way those who had been born in New Zealand and lived here all their

lives could never really understand. It was not difficult to attract voting support in a democratic country by “excesses of rhetoric” and the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, had shown that recently by his handling of the Rainbow Warrior affair. Certain French politicians had used the issue in the same way. Sir Robert said that that was not what relationships between two countries were all about.