Subject: HEADLINES 6 - 9 September 1995 (6 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Three opinion polls released on Wednesday showed Chirac's popularity was plunging, four months into his presidency, largely over dissatisfaction with resumption of nuclear tests. One poll said six in 10 voters disapproved of the tests but roughly the same proportion believed France should have a nuclear deterrent. (6 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Argentina on Wednesday condemned as "repugnant" and "detestable" the French nuclear weapons test on Mururoa atoll. (6 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - German Chancellor Kohl, told parliament he disagreed with French President Chirac over the tests. But he was not "ready to join anything that will harm the German-French friendship" and reassured its closest ally of its continued support. Opposition Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens slammed the blast on Mururoa atoll as a fatal mistake but also backed continued cooperation with France. (6 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - China issued a non-committal response to France's nuclear test, saying it had noted the event and hoped Paris would join other countries in trying to reach a nuclear test ban. China says it will cease all nuclear testing once a comprehensive test ban treaty comes into force. Diplomats have said they expect China to carry out at least three more tests next year before the treaty is expected to take effect. (6 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - The tiny South Pacific nation of Nauru will suspend diplomatic relations with France, Nauru President Bernard Dowiyogo said on Wednesday. Nauru, a 21 sq km speck in the Pacific Ocean with a population of 10,000, and devastated by years of phosphate mining, has been a vocal opponent of the resumption of French testing. It boycotted last month's South Pacific Games in French Tahiti. (6 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Heherson Alvarez, chairman of the Philippine Senate environment committee on Wednesday condemned France's resumption of nuclear testing and called on Filipinos to boycott French products. (6 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Australian Prime Minister Keating on Wednesday condemned the resumption of French nuclear tests as a stupid act that showed contempt for the people of the region.Australia's Transport Workers Union reacted promptly on the French test: they imposed a 24 hour ban on servicing Air France flights, forcing Air France to cancel a flight. Union officials have said they would consider further action if France tested any more nuclear weapons. (6 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - On Tuesday Chile's ambassador in Paris, Juan Manuel Morales, had been ordered back to Santiago "for consultations" -- a clear sign of displeasure over the explosion on Mururoa atoll. (6 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - France's ambassador to Australia, Dominique Girard, on Wednesday defended France's nuclear test as necessary for France's national interests. (6 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - French opposition Socialist, Communist and Greens parties and veteran marine explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau were among the first to deplore the underground explosion, showing Chirac faces negative fallout at home as well as abroad. Opinion polls have shown that about 63 percent of voters oppose the resumption of nuclear testing. (7 Sept. 1995) Reuter: - The people of Papeete began clearing up the rubble of their devastated city on Thursday. Destruction at the airport, which was ransacked on Wednesday morning, has been put at $10 million. Sixteen people were reported injured during the clashes on Wednesday, two seriously, according to an official count. Fifty rioters have so far been arrested. Max Pons, a French resident of Papeete for 20 years, had more anger against his French compatriots than the local people. "You take a Tahitian, you insult him, you don't respect him, you step on him and you expect them to say thank you? They will do what they can and they can't do much. All they can do is set fires and break everything." (7 Sept. 1995) Reuter: - French businesses worry that anti- nuclear consumer boycotts of their products will take their toll. The effect of boycotts has not yet surfaced in trade and sales data, but anecdotal evidence is disconcerting and the controversy cannot do them any good. The president of the French wine and spirits association CNVEV, Jerome Quiot, said that French wine sales in Denmark had plunged 10 percent in July. (7 Sept. 1995) Reuter: - France's Superphenix fast-breeder reactor was shut down on Monday, just 12 days after being restarted. This was disclosed by a local environmental group, Europeans against Superphenix. Problems surfaced in an electronic circuit board and then in a valve which vented steam as plant engineers started bringing down the reactor's temperature. No nuclear material was released as a result of the problems and there was no danger, the officials said. (7 Sept. 1995) Reuter: - U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali on Thursday added his voice to criticism of France's resumption of nuclear testing, saying he opposed such testing by any nation. "He is against nuclear weapons testing. Period," his spokesman Joe Sills said. (7 Sept. 1995) Reuter: - In a speech to the French Institute for Higher National Defence Studies, Prime Minister Alain Juppe urged a new policy of concerted nuclear deterrence to guarantee Germany's security and advocated closer nuclear weapons ties with Britain. (7 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Hiroshi Nakajima, the head of the World Health Organisation on Thursday condemned in a speech in Gabon the resumption of nuclear testing without naming France. guarantees of safety. (7 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - German Foreign Minister Kinkel called France's offer to extend its nuclear shield to Germany "an interesting idea". Several foreign and defence policy experts from Kohl's Christian Democrats (CDU) and Free Democrat (FDP) coalition partners reacted positively to the French offer. CDU disarmament spokesman Pflueger said the French offer amounted to a step forward towards a common European defence policy. The Greens accused Bonn of quietly aiming to become a nuclear power through the European Union. (7 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Two accidents occured last month at the Ignalina nuclear power plant at Lithuania. The first incident occurred on August 7 when two cranes became entangled while replacing fuel rods in the second reactor block. Six days later, a 150 kg (330 lb) fuel rod broke while spent radioactive fuel was being lowered into a waste pool and it sank to the bottom. The accidents only came to light in a press report on Wednesday. (7 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Despite the damage to France's image abroad and his own popularity at home, President Jacques Chirac stood "absolutely firm" on his decision to complete a final series of tests to ensure the credibility of the country's nuclear strike force. (7 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Tahitian anti-nuclear protesters smashed their way into the island's international airport terminal with a bulldozer and set fire to the building. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Protesters, mostly members of local environmental groups, burned an effigy of French President Chirac, shouted insults, threw paint at and blocked traffic for two hours on Friday outside the French embassy in Lima, Peru to protest France's nuclear test. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - About 400 Swedes demonstrated outside France's embassy in Stockholm on Friday in protest against French nuclear testing. Swedish Culture Minister Margot Wallstrom took part in an anti-nuclear demonstration in Tahiti. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Police said 1,000 young people gathered in front of Berlin's French cultural centre while 150 schoolchildren demonstrated outside the French consulate in the northern city of Hamburg, Germany in a portest against Frencg N-testing. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Stepping up a war of words against Tokyo to defend France's resumption of nuclear testing, French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette said he was "deeply shocked" by the presence of Japanese Finance Minister Masayoshi Takemura at a protest in Tahiti last weekend. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Mayor Takashi Hiraoka of Hiroshima, in Paris to protest against the tests, told Chirac in an open letter that resuming tests was an "unforgiveable violence" and a "betrayal of mankind." Hiraoka said that his protest visit to Paris was as "a simple citizen of Hiroshima" and not as a representative of the Japanese government. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - French President Chirac has agreed to let a European Union mission check his country's nuclear test sites in the South Pacific. The Commission will use the data to help it decide if the experiments can be defined as "particularly dangerous" under European Union law, in which case France may have to seek Commission assent for further detonations. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - French airlines on Friday cancelled flights to Tahiti until further notice following rioting in which buildings at the international airport were burned. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - France expelled four Greenpeace activists from French Polynesia, because they represented a threat to public order. The activists were effectively held under arrest by French police and military personnel for almost a week. "We've been fighting tests there for 20 years and we're not going to be intimidated," Greenpeace Stephanie Mills said. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Greenpeace chief in France Penelope Komites rejected charges by French Polynesia President Flosse that Greenpeace was to blame for the riots in Papeete. She said "Violence against French citizens or interests is unappropriate and unacceptable." The French left-wing daily Liberation squarely accused Chirac for the riots. The popular France-Soir and Le Parisien said the rioters had been deceived and manipulated. "It at least shows the world that anti-nuclear campaigns against France are not that innocently ecologist." (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - One of the South Pacific states, Nauru, has suspended diplomatic ties with France over the test. New Zealand and Chile have withdrawn their ambassadors from Paris in protest. In Darwin, Australian anti-nuclear protesters blockaded a uranium export storage depot, chaining themselves to drums of uranium concentrate that had been due to be shipped to Europe. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Famous soccer stars in Italy, including two French internationals, plan to join a protest against nuclear weapons tests during Sunday's league games. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - A delegation from the U.S.-led Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO) would meet North Korean officials in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on September 11 and 12. Under an accord signed in Geneva in October last year, the U.S. agreed to provide the North with $4.5 billion in light-water nuclear reactors and alternative energy supplies in return for North Korea freezing and ultimately dismantling a nuclear programme suspected of being intended for military purposes. (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Tahiti's leading anti-nuclear and pro- independence activist, Oscar Temaru, appealed for calm. Wednesday's rioting, which left the airport terminals and much of the city centre gutted and broken, followed France's nuclear test. (8 Sept. 1995) Reuter: - Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said the French had sown the seeds of the strife by going ahead with the nuclear test programme in the face of widespread international condemnation. In Tahiti "the French have reaped the whirlwind that they have sown." (8 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Pacific nations have put Britain on notice that Prime Minister John Major risks isolation at this November's Commonwealth summit (chaired by New Zealand) over his refusal to condemn French nuclear testing in their waters. (9 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - France said it would attend a World Court public hearing in The Hague on Monday on a New Zealand bid to stop its nuclear testing, but cautioned this did not mean Paris was recognising the court's authority in the case. (9 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - The 15 EU foreign ministers began two- day informal talks on current progress in the Bosnian conflict. But sparks flew as French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette fired back at criticism from Scandinavian countries over the French nuclear testing. Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen rejected the French position; "We have to echo the views of our populations." (9 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Six in 10 French voters believe France's decision to resume nuclear tests was wrong, according to an opinion poll to be published on Sunday. 36 percent approved them. Four percent had no opinion. Earlier polls showed similar percentages. (9 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the French embassy in London on Saturday in a noisy but otherwise peaceful protest against French nuclear testing organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). A petition with 100,000 signatures was handed into the embassy. (9 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - Tourists left the riot-scarred Tahitian capital Papeete as the city reopened for business for the first time since French nuclear testing sparked a spree of violence, arson and looting. French Polynesia's President Gaston Flosse blamed local politics and not nuclear testing for the riots. The airport has been closed to normal traffic since early Wednesday when the riotes began. As tourists left, more French riot police arrived. There are now some 540 riot police in Tahiti as well as scores of French foreign legionnaires and paratroopers. (9 Sept, 1995) Reuter: - The regional prefectural government in Saitama, immediately north of Tokyo, Japan, decided to cancel its plan to buy a helicopter made by Paris-based Eurocopter (a joint venture between Aerospatiale and Daimler-Benz Aerospace, and worth 923 million yen -US$9.32 million-) in protest against French nuclear testing. Sept 9 (Reuter) - The World Court will consider on Monday whether New Zealand can reopen its 1973 case against French nuclear testing. New Zealand took its case to The Hague at that time to try and halt atmospheric testing but the court decided no decision was needed when France announced it was giving up atmospheric tests.