Monday, October 23, 1995


   NEW YORK (Reuter) -- President Jacques Chirac said Monday France
would probably carry out four more nuclear weapons tests in the South
Pacific, fewer than he had initially planned.
   Asked on CNN television how many more underground tests Paris planned
to conduct, Chirac said:  "Probably four, and it will be ended next
spring."
   France has carried out two controversial tests at the Mururoa and
Fangataufa atolls in French Polynesia since early September, triggering
outrage especially in the Pacific region.
   Chirac announced in June that eight tests were necessary to check the
reliability and safety of France's atomic arsenal and develop computer
simulation techniques to make future tests unnecessary, but he later
said six to eight.
   Monday's statement suggested Paris will stop at six in an apparent
acknowledgement of the scale of international anger.
   Chirac said that while many world leaders had condemned French
nuclear testing publicly, few had criticized him privately.
   President Clinton had not raised the issue with him, he said, while
British Prime Minister John Major and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had
been supportive.
   Chirac singled out the Australian government for its "excessive"
reaction, saying:  "I'm not angry, I'm sorry.  I don't see why they did
that.  It's demagogic."
   Australia shut France out of a major defense aircraft contract and
allowed sustained harassment of the French embassy in Canberra.
   He said Australian hostility towards France would leave an enduring
ill-feeling.  "I think the leaders over there were more followers than
leaders," he said.
   Earlier on Monday, Chirac confirmed from the rostrum of the United
Nations General Assembly that France would sign the Rarotonga treaty
joining a South Pacific nuclear-free zone as soon as it completes its
current series of tests.
   Russia joined France, the United States and Britain in agreeing to a
total ban on nuclear tests, however small, from next year, leaving China
as the only recognized nuclear power that has not yet accepted the
principle.