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STATEMENT BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING, MP
FRENCH NUCLEAR JESTS
It is almost certain that the French government will very soon possibly within
the next few days detonate an underground nuclear device at Mururoa.
They have no moral right to conduct these tests. It is an expression of
contempt for the people they wish to call their neighbours.
Mururoa Is a French territory, six thousand kilometres from the east coast of
Australia. Scientific opinion generally inclines to the view that the tests are
unlikely to cause immediate harm to our environment, or, indeed, the
environments of countries much closer to the test site.
The Government of France may think we have no cause for concern. If this is
their calculation, they are wrong. Not only are Australia and the countries of
the Pacific outraged at the French action, so are countries everywhere,
including France's European neighbours.
The Pacific environment may not suffer damage from these tests this year or
next but no-one can guarantee this. And no-one can guarantee that there
will not be damage In 20 or 50 or 100 years time. If there was no risk, the
French government would conduct the tests in France itself.
The world is at a crucial stage on the path to a Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty. France is committed to signing such a treaty, and we welcome that.
But France along with the other nuclear weapon states including China,
whose testing program we also vigorously oppose is also committed to
exercise ' utmost restraint" on testing.
A series of eight nuclear tests by France is clearly not an exercise in
restraint. It is not an action which will encourage the hopes we all hold for a nuclearfree
world. It is not an action which will help to solve the nuclear problems
which lie at Europe's door namely the Chernobyl-style nuclear reactors still
functioning in the former Soviet Union and the nuclear materials and
expertise seeping into illicit markets.
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Rather it is an action which will give comfort to other countries with nuclear
ambitions, and one which will diminish France's reputation as a great
democracy and a good citizen of the world.
To try to persuade President Chirac to reverse this decision, the Australian
Government has been forced to take the most wide ranging diplomatic
measures we have ever taken against another democracy.
We have frozen defence contacts. We have taken the argument to the
French people directly through the pages of their newspapers and television.
We have acted in concert with our South Pacific Forum partners, and with
them sent a protest delegation to Paris.
We have argued our case in every available international forum. We are
working to bring a resolution on testing before the UIN General Assembly.
We have applied to intervene before the International Court of Justice in
support of New Zealand's attempt to reopen its 1973 nuclear tests case
against France; and the Minister for Pacific Island Affairs, Mr Bilney, is
leading a Parliamentary Delegation to Europe to build a coalition of interests
with those many Europeans who oppose the tests.
But for all the Government's efforts, we know that nothing has more
dramatically brought home the message to the French government than the
protests of the Australian people and the people of the region.
I hope that these protests continue: that they continue to be peaceful and
constructive, and directed where they should be, at the French government
and not the French people. The French people are not to blame for this, and
it is both wrong and counter productive to act in any way which suggests that
they are.
It is not for us to tell the French Government what their national security
interests are. But we must tell them in every possible way that their tests are
an affront. And that it is time for France to recognise that, whatever our
concepts of national sovereignty, we share the world's environment we
share the earth.
Our protests will not end with the first test. Until the tests stop, we will
continue to remind the French government that with every test they conduct,
the good name of France is diminished in this part of the world.
CANBERRA 1 SEPTEMBER 1995