Friday, November 17, 1995


   PARIS (Reuter) -- France canceled a summit with Italy and postponed
one with Belgium Friday in a fit of pique after Rome and Brussels joined
most European Union nations in a U.N. vote deploring French and Chinese
nuclear weapons testing.
   "This is a break in (European) solidarity," government spokesman
Alain Lamassoure said of a vote in the United Nations in which 10
European Union members criticized nuclear tests.
   "There should have been a Franco-Italian summit.  It has been
canceled.  There was also a meeting with the Belgian prime minister.  It
has been put off," Lamassoure told reporters in Brussels where he was
attending an EU budget meeting.
   President Jacques Chirac had been due to meet with Belgian Prime
Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene Wednesday and Italian Prime Minister Lamberto
Dini in Naples November 24 and 25.
   Belgian diplomatic sources said a meeting Tuesday between Belgian
Foreign Minister Erik Derycke and French European Affairs Minister
Michel Barnier had also been canceled.
   A spokesman for Chirac called the actions "a proportional response"
to the U.N. votes.
   "We felt that the solidarity we would expect from a longtime European
partner and a friend was missing," the spokesman said.
   The cancellations were the clearest signs of strain with close allies
since France resumed nuclear tests in the South Pacific in September.
   A resolution passed Thursday by the U.N. disarmament and
international security committee demanded the end of nuclear tests and
deplored current tests.
   The resolution, passed by 95 votes to 12 with 45 abstentions, did not
name any states.  But France and China are the only nations still
testing.
   Foreign Ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt told reporters the
vote would not alter France's testing plans.
   "France is keeping to its course.  It will end the tests when the
time comes," he said.
   The Italian government expressed "deep regret" over the cancellation.
   Paris's ties with Rome had been deteriorating even before the U.N.
vote.  French officials have charged that Italy's devaluation of the
lire has given it an unfair trade advantage, particularly on farm
exports.
   France also has opposed Italy's bids for a seat on the so-called
Contact Group of major powers on ex-Yugoslavia and for a permanent seat
on the U.N. Security Council.
   France has staged three underground nuclear tests in French Polynesia
in the South Pacific since September.  Chirac has said France will
probably carry out three more, by May 31 at the latest, and then join a
total test ban treaty.
   He says France needs the tests to validate a new warhead for its
submarine-based missiles and to acquire the capacity to simulate tests
by computer.
   But the tests, ending a 1992 moratorium by former Socialist president
Francois Mitterrand, have provoked outrage abroad.
   In the U.N. vote, France and Britain were the only EU nations to vote
against the resolution while Germany, Spain and Greece abstained.
   EU nations Italy, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland,
Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria and Luxembourg voted for the text,
which "strongly deplores" nuclear testing and "strongly urges" an end to
all testing.
   Most of the 12 states who voted with France against the U.N.
resolution were former French colonies in Africa.