‘Moral’ part in sinking denied

Press, 1 February 1986, Page 8

‘Moral’ part in sinking denied

NZPA-Reuter Paris President Francois Mitterrand says, in a book published yesterday, that last year’s Rainbow Warrior affair “did not engage France morally,” and that it gives Pacific nations no right to oppose French nuclear tests. Mr Mitterrand, in the preface to a book of speeches, .= reaffirms French determination to continue nuclear tests in the Pacific, and accuses his country’s critics of

picking on France rather than the other four atomic Powers. He says the sinking of the Greenpeace protest ship Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand last July by French secret agents, “does not change the substance of the debate.” “Nobody can use an act which does not engage our country morally as an? argument to make it stop patrolling the atolls and give up testing,” Mr Mitterrand says.

France’s presence in the Pacific “evidently bothers a lot of people,” but he intends, nonetheless, to increase it by

building an important strategic base in New Caledonia for submarines, warships and supersonic planes.