Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 12:51:35 
 
X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.0 -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN
Status: R

15 Sep 1996 (Reuter) - France shuts down land-based nuclear
missiles Monday when it ends a 25-year doomsday watch at an
underground launch base as part of defense cuts ordered by
President Jacques Chirac. The 18 S3D missiles, poised for
launch from silos buried beneath scenic Provence countryside
in southeastern France, will be deactivated early Monday. The
Plateau d'Albion site covers 310 sq. miles. Dismantling the
weapons will take 30 months and cost slightly less than $77.5
million. 

13 Sep 1996 (UPI) -- Vladimir Zhirinovsky joined the ranks of
politicians joking about who will oversee the Russian nuclear
arsenal when President Boris Yeltsin undergoes surgery, saying
Friday the ``nuclear suitcase'' believed to hold the controls
to the weapons actually contains toilet articles. Gennady
Zyuganov portrayed the president as frail and powerless by
relating rumors that German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had taken
the nuclear controls back to Bonn after meeting with the
ailing Yeltsin at his vacation hideaway last weekend.

13 Sep 1996 (UPI) -- Belarus, which has for months delayed the
removal of the last 18 SS-25 nuclear missiles it inherited
from the Soviet Union, will pass the weapons to Russia by the
end of the year, officials said Friday. An agreement signed
between the Russian and Belarussian defense ministers in
December 1995 called for the missiles and their Russian crews
to be withdrawn by May. But Belarussian President Alexander
Lukashenko reneged on the agreement and threatened to redeploy
the missiles if NATO expanded into eastern Europe. 

13 Sep 1996 (Reuter) - In a rare disclosure of advance
information about a nuclear shipment, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd
said on Friday it expects to start unloading about 600 tonnes
of uranium at Mutsuogawara port in northern Japan on Tuesday.
It said in a statement that the uranium was on its way from
France and would be unloaded at the port between Tuesday and
Thursday.