Greenpeace rejects French test claims

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 4

Greenpeace rejects French test claims

PA Wellington Greenpeace yesterday rejected claims by France that its sinking of the Rainbow Warrior was justified and that its nuclear programme in the South Pacific had no consequences for the environment. France made the claims in a memorandum to the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr Javier Perez de Cuellar, who mediated between France and New Zealand in the dispute over the bombing.

The French told Mr Perez de Cuellar that the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior was justified because Greenpeace protest voyages from 1972 were illegal.

The memorandum cited the 1973 voyage of the Vega into the “exclusion zone” the French declared around Mururoa.

France also claimed that French and foreign scientists had determined that its testing programme

on Mururoa Atoll had no consequences for the environment. The chairman of Greenpeace International, Mr David McTaggart, told the French President, Mr Francois Mitterrand, in a letter yesterday that he took strong exception to the French claims.

Denying that Greenpeace acted illegally, Mr McTaggart said his own Canadian vessel Vega was in international waters when it was seized by the French Navy and he and his crew were beaten up by the French military. Mr McTaggart told Mr Mitterrand:" You claim that our actions against French nuclear testing were hostile.

“We are certainly hostile to nuclear testing, but our protests have never been anything but peaceful and non-violent.

“We have never, Mr President, sunk a French vessel by explosives, rammed a French vessel, bludgeoned a French crew on the high seas, or

accused France of working for the K.G.B. and the C.I.A. All of these actions have been taken by France against Greenpeace. “We oppose these methods as we oppose nuclear tests. As we have stressed before, we do not bear any special grudge or hostility to France, but oppose nuclear testing programmes by any country, whether they be carried out by France, the United States, the Spyiet Union or the United Kingdom.”

Mr McTaggart told Mr Mitterrand that the claim that France’s nuclear testing programme had no real consequences on the environment was simply to deny reality. “ As you well know, there are few who give this statement much credence, for there is a wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary. That claim will be condemned by future children of the Pacific, sentenced to a radioactive heritage for thousands of years.”