Tuesday, November 21, 1995 PARIS (Reuter) -- France staged a fourth nuclear test in the South Pacific Tuesday, defying a host of nations which just last week called for an end to its underground blasts. Carried out at the French Polynesian atoll of Mururoa, the latest test looked likely to be overshadowed in the media by a peace agreement ending the four-year Bosnia war. But angry reactions were swift from Australia and New Zealand, the most vocal critics of President Jacques Chirac's break with a three-year moratorium of testing. New Zealand Foreign Minister Don McKinnon said he was "exasperated and disgusted" by the latest test and described it as "totally unacceptable." Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating's office said he was appalled and said the test showed continued disregard for the South Pacific region's feelings. The Defense Ministry said the blast, carried out at 10:30 p.m. Paris time, 4:30 p.m. EST, was equivalent to less than 40,000 tons of conventional explosives and was aimed at developing capacity to simulate tests on computer. The New Zealand Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences said the explosion measured 15 kilotons, equivalent to 15,000 tons of ordinary explosives, roughly equivalent to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. Gaullist Chirac, who had angrily cancelled talks with three European allies over their support for a U.N. resolution condemning nuclear tests, Tuesday thanked Britain, Germany, Spain and Greece for their backing on the issue. He had scrapped a summit with Italy and visits due this week by the Belgian and Finnish prime ministers after they were among 10 European Union partners who voted for a draft resolution in the U.N.'s disarmament committee last Thursday. In the U.N. vote, 95 nations voted for a resolution deploring nuclear testing and urging an immediate halt to all tests, 12 voted against and 45 abstained. French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette publicly accused EU partners of hypocrisy Monday for adopting resolutions in the Western European Union that defined the French and British nuclear deterrents as contributing to Europe's security, yet voting against Paris at the United Nations. "You've got to be very hypocritical to say white one day and black the following day," he said. However, French officials said de Charette did not raise the matter formally at an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels and had stressed that he did consider there was a crisis in the EU on the issue. Critics replied that France was ill-placed to fault its partners for lacking solidarity since it did not consult them before resuming nuclear testing. The latest series of tests broke a 1992 moratorium on French nuclear testing which was declared by Chirac's predecessor, Socialist Francois Mitterrand. The first in the series took place on September 5, the second on October 2 and the third on October 27. Chirac has said France will probably stage six tests rather than the eight he originally announced in June. But he denies that the series has been cut short because of the outcry against the tests abroad. The French president has promised to sign a treaty banning tests forever once the series is completed, by May 31 at the latest. He says France needs the tests to validate a new warhead for its submarine-based missiles and acquire simulation capacity. The tests have also been unpopular in France, contributing to a dive in Chirac's popularity. Opinion polls show that while some 60 percent of voters reckon that France needs a nuclear deterrent, an almost identical proportion opposes the tests.