Subject: Headlines 28 december


     28 Dec 1995 (Reuter) - Members of Italy's Green party on
Thursday burned a picture of French President Jacques Chirac
in protest at the fifth French nuclear test.

     28 Dec 1995 (Reuter) - France will replace its ageing
fleet of Mirage-IV nuclear bombers with newer Mirage-2000-N
fighter-bombers next year, a Defence Ministry spokesman said.
The newspaper Le Monde said the government had not decided
what, if anything, would replace the Mirage-IV bombers. The
defence newsletter TTU said recently President Jacques Chirac
had decided to develop a long-range Cruise missile with a
nuclear warhead that could be fired by the new Rafale
fighter-bomber up to 900 km (560 miles) from the target.
Rafales are to come into service in the next century.

     28 Dec 1995 (Reuter) - Denmark expressed regret over the
latest French nuclear test in the South Pacific and said it
hoped it would be the last. "At the same time I would like to
express the realistic hope that 1996 will be the year in which
a global treaty banning all nuclear tests for ever will be
signed," Danish foreign minister Niels Helveg Petersen said.

     28 Dec 1995 (Reuter) - An Italian magistrate called for
Thierry Bonne, captain of the French destroyer Dupleix, and
the captain of a Greenpeace environmental ship to stand trial
over clashes during an anti-nuclear protest in the southern
Italian port of Brindisi. Bonne should be charged with
violating maritime law and theft after commandos from his ship
stormed the Greenpeace vessel in October.

     28 Dec 1995 (Reuter) -Greenpeace Spain said on Thursday
it was symbolically "expelling" France's ambassador to Spain
after the fifth and latest French nuclear test in the Pacific.
The action was to protest the "complete lack of reaction" from
the Spanish government to the five tests France has conducted,
the group said.

     28 Dec 1995 (Reuter) - A geological survey team is
expected to visit North Korea next month to prepare for the
construction of two light-water nuclear reactors, a Seoul
Foreign Ministry official said on Thursday. The team will
represent an international consortium that signed a $4.5
billion deal to supply Pyongyang with the reactors, which will
replace existing graphite reactors.

     28 Dec 1995 (Reuter) - Protesters from the Korean
Federation for Environmental Movement hurled eggs at the
French embassy in Seoul and sprayed red paint on a road sign
pointing to the building in protest against the latest nuclear
test. Scuffles broke out between riot police and the several
dozen demonstrators.

     28 Dec 1995 (UPI) -- France dismissed renewed
international condemnation of its nuclear tests. "We are
approaching the end of the series," French Foreign Ministry
Spokesman Yves Doutriaux said. "France has already said it
that once the series is terminated, it will sign the
Comprehensive Test Ban treaty now being negotiated in Geneva
and aimed at outlawing all future tests".