Greenpeace rejects French allegation

Press, 15 July 1987, Page 53

Greenpeace rejects French allegation

NZPA-Reuter aris The environmental group. Greenpeace, has rejected allegations made in a book by a French secret agent about the sinking of its flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, two years ago.

A Greenpeace spokesman, Yves Le Noir, said the book was aimed at trying to influence the findings of an international jury expected to decide whether Greenpeace should be compensated for the attack.

Le Noir said that the book, "Mission Oxygen,” written under a false name, was wrong and tried to paint Greenpeace as an anti-French and Soviet-funded movement.

A Greenpeace photographer died in the attack carried out by the French D.G.S.E. secret service. The Socialist Defence Minister, Charles Hemu, was forced to resign in the ensuing scandal. “Nothing in this book is credible because the central element is false,” Le Noir said. The book said the D.G.S.E. originally planned to blow the ship up in Amsterdam Harbour in the spring of 1985 but Le Noir said the Rainbow Warrior left Europe in 1981 and never returned before it sailed to New Zealand to protest against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. It described, in dramatic style, how a D.G.S.E. reconnaissance team visited the Dutch port to spy out ways of sinking it.

They left on the third day of their mission when they saw the ship leaving the port, according to the book. “At the time, the ship was at Jacksonville, Florida,” Le Noir said. Le Noir said the book appeared to be aimed at influencing the judgment of a three-man international arbitration team, which is due to present its verdict in a few weeks on whether compensation should be paid to Greenpeace. He said the group, composed of a Frenchman, a New Zealander and a Swiss arbiter, had met several times in Switzerland. Le Noir also dismissed allegations in the book that the photographer, Fernando Perreira, was a spy.