Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 10:59:58 
 
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12 June 1996 (Reuter) - Tension mounted aboard the MV
Greenpeace on Wednesday as the ship carrying 32 environmental
activists neared Chinese waters with a message to Beijing to
scrap its planned nuclear test in September. Arrival time on
China's border waters is now estimated at 10:30 a.m. (0230
gmt). Chinese officials declined to say how the boat would be
stopped.

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11 June 1996 (Reuter) - France's President Jacques Chirac
called on Tuesday for a global treaty banning nuclear tests to
be signed in September, declaring it would put a "definitive
end to the nuclear arms race."  

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11 June 1996 (Reuter) - Russia condemned China's weekend
nuclear test on Tuesday but said it was pleased at Beijing's
announcement that it would observe a moratorium from September
after conducting one more blast. Interfax news agency quoted
Foreign Ministry spokesman Grigory Karasin as saying Moscow
welcomed the Chinese plan to end testing. President Boris
Yeltsin  had urged this during a state visit to China in
April, he noted.  
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11 June 1996 (Reuter) - Beijing warned Greenpeace on Tuesday
to keep its ship protesting nuclear tests out of Chinese
waters, but officials refused  to give any clue on how the
boat would be stopped. "In accordance with the U.N. convention
on the international law of the sea and the law of the
People's Republic of China on its territorial waters...the
Chinese government has the right to take measures to prevent
and stop any  non-innocent passage through China's territorial
waters," Chinease Foreign Ministry spokesmen Shen said.    
"From the side of Greenpeace, there will be certainly no
confrontation. We hope that the same approach is taken by the
other side," chief campaigner Xavier Pastor said.  

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11 June 1996 (Reuter) - Japan does not have specific
information that North Korea possesses nuclear warheads, a
Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday in dismissing news
reports that Pyongyang could fire four atomic missiles at
Japan. The report in the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun, picked
up by some foreign news organisations last Sunday, said a
North Korean official had informed the United States in a
veiled threat that the communist nation had the four nuclear 
warheads which could be used if the United States refused to
extend food aid and funds for new nuclear power reactors.