Agents’ health to be stressed

Press, 23 November 1988, Page 5

Agents’ health to be stressed

NZPA Paris France will argue the medical and personal circumstances of the Rainbow Warrior agents, Mafart and Prieur, when its repatriation dispute with New Zealand goes to arbitration, a French Government official said yesterday. A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said France would stress there were two individuals involved in the dispute as well as two Governments. She hinted France might seek to defer Mafart’s return to Hao atoll if the tribunal decided he should go back to serve out the remainder of his confinement. A lawyer who represented the two agents at their trial in New Zealand said Prieur, who is preg-

nant, could "hardly” be sent back to the atoll with a baby. The Foreign Affairs spokeswoman would not say if the change of government in France would have any bearing on the country’s approach to the forthcoming arbitration, saying the proceedings would be legal rather than political, but she said the state of health of the two French agents would “undoubtedly” form part of the French depositions. The two officers were civil servants and obliged to go where their superiors sent them. “If it is certain that for reasons of health they cannot serve in certain places, their superiors must ensure that they are not transferred to those countries.”