Likely Within

French A-Tests

A Few Months

Developments in half-a-dozen directions in recent weeks have suggested that France’s prepara tions for holding nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, 775 miles south east of Tahiti, are almost com plete and that the tests will be gin in the next few months.

IF so, the original estimate of how long it would take to prepare the base at Mururoa has proved most accurate, as General Thiry, a key figure in the Mururoa project, fore cast in Tahiti in May, 1963, that the base would be ready for use in about three years (P/M, June, 1963, p. 59).

Recent developments suggesting that the time is drawing near for the French tests include: • A statement in Tahiti by the French Minister for Overseas Terri tories, General Billotte, that it is essential to build a copra processing factory in Tahiti for use by 1967 so that the Tahitians will be enticed back to the land. (It is assumed from this that the construction work on the nuclear testing project, which has employed hundreds of Tahitians dur ing the past three years, will soon be completed.) • Gossip on the “coconut radio” in Tahiti that the first nuclear ex plosions will be held in July. • A sudden and unexpected pro ject in American Samoa to build accommodation by July for a United States Air Force unit to be based in Pago Pago on “special duty”. (See p. 21.) • A statement by the New Zealand Prime Minister, Mr. Holythat the New Zealand Govern ment’s monitoring arrangements for nuclear tests are “shortly to be re viewed”. (Since the United States held nuclear experiments at Christmas Island in 1962, New Zealand has maintained monitoring stations at Rarotonga and Fiji where fall-out is analysed.) • An Associated Press report from Pans, quoting ‘‘highly qualified sources , that the French were plan ning several tests at Mururoa this year. The tests would be to “perfect the atomic trigger for France’s hydrogen bomb, and the proving 3f atomic devices to become war heads for French missiles”.