Pacific Ocean, Tuesday July 4 1995:- Greenpeace today welcomed former President Mitterrand's public condemnation of President Chirac's decision to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
The former president also told a French weekly news magazine, L'Express, that "the time has come to put an end to the nuclear armaments race".
Greenpeace France's Jean-Luc Thierry, on board the Rainbow Warrior which is en route to the Moruroa test site to protest the resumption of testing, said Mitterrand's comments showed that bi-partisan consensus in France on nuclear deterrence was now a thing of the past.
"President Mitterrand may have had a belated conversion to the only sane and rational position - that the nuclear arms race must stop - but at least he is several steps ahead of President Chirac," Thierry said. "President Chirac is trying to portray the international opposition to France's decision to resume testing as a conspiracy against French interests, but the statements by the former President show how controversial Chirac's decision is domestically in France."
Thierry said Greenpeace was confident millions of people in France and globally supported the organisation's voyage of protest to the test site. The Rainbow Warrior is currently around 200 miles south-east of Papeete, Tahiti.
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Further information: Jean-Luc Thierry, Stephanie Mills, Steve Sawyer on board the Rainbow Warrior +872 1300312 Penelope Komites, Ben Cramer, Greenpeace France +331 47 70 4689 Cindy Baxter, Greenpeace Communications, London +44 171 8330600
Pacific Ocean, July 4 1995:- Greenpeace today said a "confidential report" from the French Government claiming that nuclear tests at Moruroa were safe was a cruel hoax on the people of the Pacific.
The report has not been released, but samples taken included elevated levels of the radionuclide Cobalt-60, most likely attributable to atmospheric testing, according to a scientist involved in the project that has spoken to Greenpeace.
The "confidential report" was a short and limited study of approximately twenty samples taken at random from four areas of the Moruroa lagoon late last year, under the coordination of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to other scientists involved in the project. The samples included crustacean, fish, shellfish and soil samples.
One official involved in the sampling said it was a small and limited study and could therefore draw only limited conclusions about the safety of nuclear testing, certainly not ones related to the long term impacts of underground nuclear tests.
Greenpeace's Stephanie Mills, aboard the Rainbow Warrior en route to Moruroa atoll, said it was outrageous that the French authorities could claim that the data showed no risk, and yet refuse to release the report itself.
"This issue is too important to the people of Tahiti and the Pacific to use for cheap publicity shots to try and dilute opposition to nuclear testing. The French authorities have a moral obligation to fully disclose all the data they have to the people of Tahiti," she said.
Greenpeace France's Jean-Luc Thierry said: "If testing is so safe, why have the the medical records of workers at Moruroa been kept secret, and why has no long-term follow-up study of worker health at Moruroa been conducted? It is simply not credible to make claims of complete health and environmental safety on the basis of a few samples. It is now indisputable that fallout from atmospheric testing will lead to 430,000 excess cancer fatalities world-wide by the year 2000. To claim that atmospheric tests had no ecological or health consquences goes against all the evidence from other nuclear weapon states and from the international scientific community."
He said that concluding from a few samples that underground tests pose no threat either now or in the future indicated the French authorities either severely underestimated the risks or were willfully misleading the public. He said multidisciplinary teams of scientists independent of the nuclear industry were needed to do a wide-ranging, comprehensive assessment that would require many hundreds of samples and tests to be undertaken.
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Further information: Stephanie Mills, Jean-Luc Thierry, Steve Sawyer on board the SV Rainbow Warrior +872 1300312