Errors-To: mxe115@psuvm.psu.edu Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 15:55:34 -0400 Reply-To: wisemail@wise.antenna.nl Originator: nukenet@envirolink.org Sender: nukenet@envirolink.org Precedence: bulk From: wisemail@wise.antenna.nl To: rherried@roxy.sfo.com Subject: HEADLINES 23-27 September 1995 X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Status: RO X-Status: (23-09-95: Reuter) According to The Sunday Telegraph China has sold Iran a calutron system, a method to enrich uranium, needed to build nuclear bombs. The paper also mention that Chinese scientists have been working at a complex at Karai 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Tehran (23-09-95: Reuter) EU leaders ran a gauntlet of anti-nuclear demonstrations as they clashed with President Jacques Chirac over France's resumption of atom-bomb tests. Hundred craft gathered in a bay off the secluded hotel hosting the summit in northern Majorca. The leaders spent two days mapping the way ahead for their union, the tone was more diplomatic but the substance was similar. Chirac was glad to have had the opportunity to explain France's position to EU colleagues "who perhaps had not understood it very well." He said he had received firm support from several partners including Britain, Germany and Portugal. (23-09-95: Reuter) France, stung by bad publicity over its nuclear tests, said it will sharply cut media access to its South Pacific site for the next blast. No media representatives are being invited to visit the site ahead of time. Afterwards, only a simple news release will be issued giving the bomb's size and other essential details. A French defence specialist forecast on Friday that the next blast would be the most powerful in the planned series and would take place by October 4. (23-09-95: Reuter) Latin American states have joined the South Pacific countries in criticising nuclear testing by China and France and insisting it stop. The statement was issued on Friday after the first meeting of the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco group, representing 30 Latin American and Caribbean nations who bar nuclear weapons from the region and the 11 states who signed the 1985 Rarotonga Treaty that made the South Pacific a nuclear free zone. (27-09-95: Reuter) Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, in talks with Secretary of State Warren Christopher "made clear the reactor deal with Iran will not be implemented," a senior U.S. official told reporters. (27-09-95: Reuter) Ukrainian Environment Minister Yuri Kostenko said experts from G7 industrialised countries meeting in Kiev this week had opposed Ukraine's proposal to build a thermal plant to compensate for Chernobyl's planned closure by the year 2000. Ukraine says about $4 billion is needed to shut the station. Kostenko said the experts favoured modernisation of the entire energy sector to make up for the five percent of Ukraine's electricity produced by Chernobyl. This included completion of nuclear reactors under construction and upgrading thermal and hydroelectric stations. Both Kostenko and Allan Culhan, Canadian chairman of the G7 group in Kiev, said they were satisfied with the latest round of talks and an exchange of "general principles" on closing the station. Several Western companies are looking into how to proceed with closure, including construction of a new "tomb" to replace the cracking structure around the ruined reactor. (27-09-95: Reuter) French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette and his Chinese counterpart, Qian Qichen, stood firm in speeches to the U.N. General Assembly despite a wave of criticism from Asian and European nations during this week's meeting in New York. De Charette said France was conducting a limited series of underground blasts in the South Pacific so it could then sign a global treaty in 1996 banning all nuclear tests. China's Qian, whose country has been criticised for continued underground tests at its Lop Nor test site, said Beijing would continue to work for a test ban treaty. China says it has run fewer tests than other nuclear powers and insists it wants to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Germany disagrees with Paris over the nuclear tests but has declined to join public criticism at a time when there are already unusual strains between the two countries over future European integration. (27-09-95: Reuter) Japanese Nobel prize-winning novelist Kenzaburo Oe rebutted criticism from a French laureate that he snubbed France by boycotting an arts festival to protest at French nuclear testing. In an essay published in the daily Asahi Shimbun, Oe defended himself against criticism by French author Claude Simon that he showed rudeness and hostility toward France by withdrawing from a festival in the southern French town of Aix-en-Provence earlier this month. Oe, an outspoken pacifist, apologised for boycotting the festival but said his move reflected not hostility towards France, but disapointment at its decision to carry out nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia. (27-09-95: Reuter) Greenpeace vowed to keep trying to hinder France's nuclear testing programme despite the seizure of its fourth protest by French military commandos inside the exclusion zone around Mururoa last Tuesday. Earlier, the Vega breached the 12-nautical mile exclusion zone around the atoll with Greenpeace founder David McTaggart, at the helm and another veteran activist and 21 Polynesians on board. Greenpeace spokeswoman Lynette Thorstensen declared in Tahiti that the Polynesians request an immediately stop on further nuclear testing and wanted to "reclaim their ancestral lands", Mururoa and Fangataufa. Last atoll lies about 20 nautical miles southeast of Mururoa and is expected to be the site of France's next nuclear test. This test is widely expected to be the biggest of the seven or eight planned before next May. A total of about nine protest boats are still drifting off Mururoa and Fangataufa, said a Greenpeace activist aboard the Manutea, one of Greenpeace's two remaining boats in the area. (27-09-95: Reuter) A British official defended London's silence on French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. New Zealand Prime Minister Jim Bolger said he had expressed his disappointment to Sir Patrick Mayhew, the visiting Northern Ireland Minister. "I raised with Sir Patrick the concern of New Zealand that the British government was not forthcoming on the question of French nuclear testing," Bolger said. He did not elaborate. "We believe it is of overriding importance that that treaty should be signed and that it should be fully comprehensive," Mayhew told reporters. (26-09-95: Reuter) French commandos seized another Greenpeace vessel off France's main South Pacific test site, arresting two senior Greenpeace activists. Arrested along with veteran Greenpeace activist Chris Robinson and Greenpeace International's founder, David McTaggart, were 21 Polynesians on board who Greenpeace said wanted to "reclaim" their land. "They are being investigated by police at Mururoa this afternoon," French military spokesman Jean-Eric Winckler said. All 23 would be flown to Papeete later, Winckler said in the Tahitian capital. (25-09-95: Reuter) Greenpeace denied that its Pacific anti-nuclear coordinator, Stephanie Mills, had been demoted and would not have her contract renewed over blunders in a campaign against French nuclear tests. The executive director of Greenpeace France, Penelope Komites, denied that Mills had been disciplined. She told the pressure group would be meeting in the next three to six weeks to evaluate decisions taken in the Pacific and Mills might yet have her contract renewed, although at one stage she had made it known she would prefer to go back to her job as manager of Greenpeace's New Zealand office. (25-9-95: Reuter) Spokesman Yves Doutriaux from the French Foreign Ministry said the team of three nuclear experts from the European Commission went on Friday to Mururoa atoll. He said the experts toured the atoll's military base and visited facilities set up by France's Institute for Nuclear Protection and Safety (IPSN) in Tahiti, witnessing operations to take samples for radioactivity checks. The group was invited by French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette after Commission president Jacques Santer had asked that experts be allowed to visit the site before the controversial series of tests was