Subject: HEADLINES 20 - 22 september 1995

22-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - Chinese and Japanese leaders met for
the first time on Sunday since Japan cut off grant aid to
China to protest Beijing's nuclear testing, but made little
progress in the standoff. The Japanese prime minister Tomiichi
Murayama told the Chinese president Jiang that giving aid and
business cooperation were separate issues and China should not
worry about broader economic cooperation, Japanese officials
said.  

22-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - New Zealand Prime Minister Jim Bolger,
addressing the United Nation's 50th anniversary the world
leaders, blasted China and France on Sunday for continuing
nuclear test explosions which he said contradicted the U.N.'s
goals. Bolger said it was vital to conclude a Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty next year.

22-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - Cash-strapped Bulgaria will lose $1.5
billion if it closes a controversial Soviet-made nuclear
reactor, officials said on Sunday. Differences over Kozloduy's
21-year-old Reactor Number One have cast a shadow over an
environmental conference that starts in Sofia on Monday.   
The reactor was restarted on October 6.

21-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - Thousands of people across Italy took
to the streets on Saturday to protest at French nuclear tests
in the South Pacific and China's continuing test programme.
About 5,000 people, some wearing anti-toxic suits and 
carrying protest signs, marched through central Rome and
draped a banner saying "No to Nuclear Testing" over the front
of the Colosseum.  

20-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - Police used a fire-ladder and ropes to
bring down an anti-nuclear protester who shackled himself to
the top of a flagpole in the French Embassy compound in Prague
on Friday. The demonstrators climbed the pole and hoisted a
flag with a radiation symbol alongside the Frenmch tricolour.
Ten demonstrators were arrested.

20-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - President Nelson Mandela on Friday
shrugged off claims in a book by two journalists that South
African right-wingers could have access to nuclear weapons.   
Journalists Peter Hounam and Steve McQuillan said on Thursday
at the launch of the book "The Mini-Nuke Conspiracy" that
South Africa had not destroyed all its nuclear warheads and
that some could have ended up in the hands of rightwingers
opposed to Mandela. 

20-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - The United States, France and Britain
promised on Friday to sign a treaty next year banning nuclear
weapons from the South Pacific, where French nuclear tests are
causing widespread anger. Britain's refusal to condemn the
tests had been expected to create tension at next month's
Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Auckland.  

20-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - France confirmed on Friday it would
sign a treaty banning nuclear weapons in the South Pacific
with the United States and Britain in the first half of 1996,
after Paris completes nuclear tests in the region.

20-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - Britain announced on Friday it would
join France and the United States and sign the South Pacific
nuclear-free treaty in early 1996. "Why will they not sign
now?" asked William Peden of the Greenpeace environmental
action group. "Although the Pacific in future will be free of
nuclear weapons testing, the radioactive and toxic legacy of
hundreds of atmospheric and underground nuclear tests by
Britain, France and the U.S. will remain."  

20-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - In an official statement, Britain said
it had long supported  such zones as a contribution to world
peace and that all three powers would sign up to the pact in
"the first half of 1996." 

20-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - Japan hopes to drum up the support of
as many countries as possible for a proposed U.N. resolution
calling for an immediate halt to nuclear testing, a senior
Foreign Ministry official said on Friday. Japan is part of a
19-nation group preparing the resolution. The resolution will
have no binding effect on either France or China, but it would
put additional diplomatic pressure on them.

20-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - The leader of the main pro-independence
party in French Polynesia, Oscar Temaru, called on Thursday
for a boycott of local elections set for March next year.  
His party's standing has fallen because of rioting in Tahiti
after France resumed nuclear testing on September 5 at Mururoa
atoll, 1,200 km (750 miles) from Tahiti.

20-OCT-1995 (Reuter) - Australia welcomed on Friday plans by
France, Britain and the United States to join the South
Pacific nuclear-free zone and urged Paris to show leadership
by abandoning its widely condemned nuclear test programme.
Australia has been at the forefront of world opposition to 
the programme, pushing an anti-nuclear resolution in the
United Nations.

20-OCT-1995 (UPI) -- France, under attack for its decision to
resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific, Friday confirmed
it intends to sign a treaty aimed at turning the region into a
nuclear-free zone. The prime minister of the South Pacific
nation of Vanuatu, Maxime Carlot, Friday congratulated France,
the United States and Britain over their decision to sign the
Treaty of Rarotonga. Chirac earlier made Carlot a Grand
Officier de la Legion d'Honneur, one of France's highest
honors. 

20-OCT-1995 (UPI) -- The United States, France and Britain
have agreed to sign sometime during the first six months of
1996, a treaty creating a nuclear-free zone in the South
Pacific, the Clinton administration said Friday. That timing
was intended to allow France to complete a series of
controversial nuclear tests in the South Pacific. It has
already been signed by Australia, New Zealand, the Cook
Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, the
Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Western Samoa.