French expected to promote agents

Press, 9 July 1986, Page 1

French expected to promote agents

By

r in Wellington

PATRICIA HERBERT

The two French agents, convicted of manslaughter in the Rainbow Warrior bombing, will receive full pay during their enforced three-year stay at Hao military base.

This is implicit in the French Government’s characterisation of their transfer as a “posting” and was confirmed by the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, yesterday. Mr Lange said he had no doubt the two officers, Captain Dominique Prieur and Major Alain Mafart, would be promoted when returned to French hands "if they have not been already.”

said they were “not for sale" and had then sold them for SUS 7 million — the amount France has been ordered to pay as compensation. He accused Mr Lange of being “two-faced” saying, “What he says one day, he reneges on the next and what commitment he gives to New Zealand on one day, he changes his mind on the next.”

tion’s criticisms, Mr Lange said National had freed more than 100 convicted people through deportation and that Hao might be a pleasant place to spend three weeks but not three years. Earlier, Sir Robert, National’s spokesman on foreign affairs, had issued a press statement saying New Zealand would now be seen as a country prepared to buckle under “crude blackmail.” The Government, he said, had abandoned its duty to administer the law fairly hnd impartially in agreeing to an adjudication by Mr Perez de Cuellar.

He also said they had continued to be paid while in New Zealand and now had “about $60,000 waiting to be picked up.”

Mr Bolger delivered the rebuke in Parliament after a noisy interlude during which four National members, three of them former Ministers, had been asked to leave the Chamber by the Speaker, Dr Wall. They were Sir Robert Muldoon (Tamaki), and Messrs Warren Cooper (Otago), Rob Talbot (Ashburton), and Neil Austin (Bay of Islands). All were evicted within the first 13 minutes of yesterday’s session.

He made the comments after the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, had raised the issue in an attack on the Prime Minister for accepting the decision. "I want to know on behalf of all the New Zealand public whether

Lange interrupted his reading to blow him a kiss, said the law had not been changed yet — a reference to the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. Sir Robert was asked to leave and obliged but not before protesting vigorously at what he described as “partiality of the worst kind” by the Speaker. The Prime Minister, he said, had initiated the exchange and should also be ejected. Mr Talbot agreed with a loud “Hear, hear” — and got the red card for his trouble. Later Mr Austin was also evicted for interjecting while the Speaker was on his feet.

The Leader of the Democratic Party, Mr Beetham, was equally critical, alleging that principle had been sacrificed to expediency and that the settlement amounted to a gross political manipulation of New Zealand’s judicial system. “The Labour Government has been plotting for months this insulting interference with the decision of the Chief Justice and conditioning New Zealanders into accepting a deliberate ploy to capitulate to French .demands while avoiding public responsibility for doing so,” Mr Beetham said.

they (Mafart and Prieur) will be given suntan lotion, scuba gear and tennis rackets as their farewell gifts from the New Zealand justice system as they go to their new posting in the South Pacific island of Hao where they will join their French colleagues with their friends and enjoy life to the full,” Mr Bolger said.

The fracas erupted as Mr Lange was making a Ministerial statement on Mr Perez de Cuellar’s ruling, the terms of which he said would now be incorporated through a formal exchange of letters with France.

He alleged it was a charade to pretend, as the Government was, that the judicial process had not been undermined, especially as New Zealand’s submission to the arbiter, the United Nations Secre-tary-General Mr Javier Perez de Cuellar, had specified that under New Zealand law the two prisoners would not be eligible for parole until they had served at least half their 10-year sentence.

As Mr Lange was outlining the fate of the two agents, the Opposition kept taunting him with cries of “Club Med” and Sir Robert once with “oeuf sur le visage,” which he explained meant “egg on the face.” The level of interjections rose and, as Mr Lange started to respond to them with political cracks of his own, the Speaker intervened and ruled that he be heard in silence.

. Book, page 8 Further reports, page 3

In reply to the Opposi-

Mr Perez de Cuellar’s judgment had “wholly negated” that principle,! Mr Bolger said, because Mafart and Prieur were being posted to Hao where they would get full pay and conditions, possibly with “perks.” Mr Bolger said Mr Lange’s credibility was in tatters; not only had he given repeated assurances that the agents would not be released but he had

The first to infringe this was Mr Cooper; he laughed when Mr Lange said the decision on Mafart and Prieur fully respected New Zealand’s insistence that there be no release to freedom — and was promptly sent out.

The next was Sir Robert, who, when Mr