From mosa@netcom.com  Thu Sep  7 22:25:09 1995
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From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
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Subject: FRENCH UPDATE 9/5/95
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Date: 7 Sep 1995 04:58:41 GMT
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/** disarm.ctb-npt: 233.0 **/
** Topic: FRENCH UPDATE 9/5/95 **
** Written  4:20 PM  Sep  5, 1995 by ctb in cdp:disarm.ctb-npt **
\s
To  :  Testing followers everywhere
\a
From:  Bruce Hall at the CTB Clearinghouse
Date:  September 5, 1995
Re  :  French testing update
 
CHIRAC SAYS FRANCE MAY CONDUCT FEWER TESTS, WILL WRAP UP SERIES
WELL BEFORE MAY 31, 1996
 
     French President Jacques Chirac told France2 TV today that
France may conduct fewer nuclear tests and that France remained
committed to a zero yield treaty.
     According to Reuters reporter John Chalmers, Chirac "said he
may cut to six the eight planned underground tests and complete
them far earlier than had been scheduled.
     'Eight tests is the maximum, but as soon as we have enough
data, naturally we will stop,' he told France 2 television in an
interview. 'And most likely we will stop well before the date I
indicated, which was May 31.'
     Chirac said that the tests would be France's last and would
end once they yielded sufficient data to give France the ability to
simulate nuclear explosions by computer.
     'My aim is not to do eight tests. My aim is to ensure the
reliability of our deterrent and also have the capability for
simulation,' the Gaullist president said.
     'For that purpose, six to eight further tests are needed.'
     The first of the series, which will break a moratorium on
testing declared by Chirac's Socialist predecessor Francois
Mitterrand in 1992, is expected at any moment.
     Chirac declined to say when the blasts would occur. 'They will
take place the moment that the technicians judge right.'
     THE ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTS:
     "Chirac reaffirmed that at the end of the tests, 'France will
sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty' and will support the zero option
that would prohibit even small test blasts Washington has sought to
continue.
   Earlier, underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau added his voice to
the anti-nuclear outcry, pleading with Chirac to scratch the
testing, which he said 'shows the power of the nuclear lobby.'
   Cousteau later announced his resignation from a government
advisory body called the Council for the Rights of Future
Generations, saying the 'future of our descendants is ...
incompatible with the nuclear threat.'"
     SOURCES: "Chirac holds out prospect of fewer nuclear tests,"
John Chalmers, Reuters, September 5, 1995. "France-Nuclear," Sandy
MacIntyre, The Associated Press, September 5, 1995 
 
FRENCH POLYNESIAN PRESIDENT SAYS TEST THIS WEEK 
 
09/05 0641  French Polynesian president says test this week
    (Date correct. Tahiti is east of International Dateline)
     By Michael Perry
     PAPEETE, Tahiti, Sept 4 (Reuter) - French Polynesia President
Gaston Flosse said on Monday French nuclear testing would resume
this week and foreign protesters such as Greenpeace, which staged
a second raid on the test site, should leave his country.
     "The president of the (French) republic has asked me to go to
Paris after the first experiment. I plan to go at the beginning of
next week," Flosse said in an interview on Radio France Overseas
(RFO) in the Tahitian capital Papeete.
    
CLINTON ASKED FRANCE TO DELAY TEST
 
     After intense speculation that France's first test would occur
on or about September 1, Reuters News Service reports that
President Clinton asked France not to carry out the test while he
was in Hawaii this weekend.   According to Reuters, "Clinton was in
Hawaii for ceremonies commemorating the victory over Japan 50 years
ago.
     The newspaper Le Monde said Paris could hardly refuse since
Washington had allowed France to fly nuclear fuel across U.S.
territory to the South Pacific test sites over the last 30 years.
     Defense correspondent Jacques Isnard said nearly all requests
for French DC8s carrying nuclear bomb parts to fly through American
airspace had been granted.
     However, in 1996, 1973, and 1974 two Mirage bombers and a
Jaguar jet which were to drop bombs into the sea around Moruroa
were refused permission to fly over the United States, he said."
     In Monday's Washington Post, Foreign Service Correspondent
William Drozdiak writes that, "U.S. officials reportedly warned the
French that Clinton would be compelled to make a public
condemnation of the nuclear blasts if one were detonated while he
was in the Pacific Region."
     The Hawaii Coalition Against Nuclear Testing held two anti-
nuclear testing demonstrations over the weekend to coincide with
President Clinton's visit.  Groups staged several demonstrations
against French nuclear testing in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin,
Chicago, New York and at the French Embassy in Washington, DC.
SOURCES:  "US Requested Test Delay While Clinton in Hawaii,"
Reuter, September 4, 1995.  FRANCE DEFENDS TEST PLANS AS NUCLEAR
PROTESTS BUILD, William Drozdiak, Washington Post, September 4,
1995.

** End of text from cdp:disarm.ctb-npt **

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