Subject: HEADLINES 1 - 4 maart 1996 Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 08:21:49 -0500 March 4 1996 (Reuter) - President Alexander Lukashenko, the hardline leader of Belarus, the former Soviet republic worst hit by the Chernobyl disaster, has received no invitation to next month's Moscow summit on nuclear issues. "I will be going," when asked whether he was attending the conference organised by G7 industrialised countries. March 4 1996 (Reuter) - The United States will not attempt to veto new global standards for transporting radioactive materials by air even though it considers them far too lax, a U.S. official said on Monday. Opponents of the new criteria complain they offer no protection in case of a serious crash. They say any major airplane accident could trigger a nuclear disaster. About 10 million shipments of radioactive and fissionable material, including uranium and plutonium, are made every year. March 4 1996 (Reuter) - Pakistani Foreign Minister Assef Ahmad Ali reiterated on Monday that his country had received no nuclear weapons-related material from China. Ali accused arch-rival India, which last week announced a 9.7 percent increase in its defence budget, of trying to set off a dangerous new weapons race in South Asia. March 4 1996 (REUTER) - The United States last week deferred for one month $10 billion in U.S. Export-Import Bank loans to China while Washington decides whether to impose sanctions on Beijing for the alleged sale of nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan. Pakistani Foreign Minister Assef Ahmad Ali said Chinese nuclear sales to Pakistan were limited to a 300-megawatt nuclear reactor being built at Chashma for civilian use under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. March 2 1996 (Reuter) - France plans to hand back this month five boats seized from the environmental group Greenpeace during protests against French nuclear tests in the South Pacific last year, Greenpeace said on Saturday. The public prosecutor in Papeete, Tahiti, said on Friday he had decided to free the vessels, including Greenpeace's flagship Rainbow Warrior II, saying there was no reason to keep them because the tests were over. March 2 1996 (Reuter) - President Jacques Chirac said on Saturday France would sign a Southeast Asian nuclear weapons-free zone pact once certain technical difficulties were resolved. He said "only technical details," which he did not identify, were holding up France's signature of the treaty. March 1 1996 (Reuter) - Hungary's Industry and Trade Minister Imre Dunai said on Friday he believed nuclear power was cheap and environmentally safe but denied his government was planning to build a second nuclear power plant. "I believe we have to consider the possibility of building a second nuclear power plant but there are no concrete plans". The currently operated Soviet-built plant at Paks on the Danube provides over a third of the country's electricity. March 1 (Reuter) - Prime Minister Yevhen Marchuk on Friday suggested Ukraine would have to keep the Chernobyl nuclear power station working unless the West came up with promised money to shut down the stricken plant. "The problem is such that if we delay the Chernobyl issue further, we will have to resolve it ourselves, whether we get help or not," Marchuk said in Slavutych, the town built after the disaster to rehouse evacuated Chernobyl employees. March 1 1996 (Reuter) - South African Energy and Minerals Affair Minister Pik Botha invited reporters to the session at the headquarters of the Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC) at Pelindaba, 20 km (12 miles) west of Pretoria, to investigate an incident at the plant in March last year which nuclear regulators described as "a serious degradation of safety culture." Pelindaba is the site of a research nuclear reactor and was the place where South Africa designed and built six nuclear warheads, all of which have been dismantled under IAEA supervision. March 1 1996 (Reuter) - Experts will arrive at France's South Pacific atomic test sites next Tuesday to set in motion probes for radioactive contamination following a recent series of underground blasts, the U.N. nuclear agency said on Friday. Many environmental groups are worried the atolls and surrounding waters have been contaminated. They are particularly concerned about leakage if the underground blasts cracked the atolls' basalt base. March 1 1996 (UPI) -- Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency are to visit the South Pacific sites of France's nuclear tests shortly to determine if the explosions have damaged the region's environment, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Friday. He said France is confident the mission will confirm the "harmlessness" of the series of six tests it staged in the Mururoa and Fangataufa Atolls in French Polynesia between September and January. March 1 1996 (UPI) The International Atomic Energy Agency announced Friday it will begin studying radioactivity levels next week at the Muroroa and Fangataufa atolls in the South Pacific, where France has been conducting nuclear tests since the 1960s. Experts from 10 countries will supervise up to five research teams checking current and future land and sea radioactive problems at the French Polynesian atolls. Measuring current radioactive levels will be relatively simple, but pinpointing future levels could be more difficult.