Wellington

David Barber

Nuclear tests strike a psychological blow

PEOPLE in New Zealand and the Pacific have been asking the question for years: If the French nuclear tests are as safe as they say, why not conduct them in France?

The answer has always beeen pretty obvious the reason is political but no French leader until Prime Minister Michel Rocard has been prepared to admit it. The tests were safe, he repeated during his historic visit to New Zealand at the end of April “there is not the slightest danger”.

But the problem was people perceived that they were not.

There was especially a psychological problem for people who lived in the vicinity of nuclear tests, he said.

There were virtually no people living for 500 miles around Moruroa Atoll, so testing in the Pacific didn’t matter. The implication was that millions lived around the Massif Central, so testing in France would matter, even if a majority of the French favour an independent force de frappe .

For “psychological” read “political”. Rocard was saying while the majority of French voters were content to have their nuclear weapons tested far away in Pacific waters, it would be politically unacceptable to test them at home.

Safety, or harmlessness, it seems, is measured electorally in terms of the number of miles between the majority of your voters and a nuclear testing site. A fair enough argument, I guess, if you’re a politician, and just bad luck if you were born in, or choose to live in, an unpopulated area like the Pacific.

Unpopulated? Undeveloped? A South Seas paradise even?

What an ideal place to test weapons of mass destruction! You can test to your heart’s content and not run the risk of being thrown out of office, a risk you would run if you tried to test the cursed things things Rocard said were so awful that even heads of state and their generals were scared to use them in your own constituency.

One had to admire the Prime Minister’s honesty, and one could even follow his argument in favour of nuclear weapons as a means of keeping the peace. Previous wars had been started because people were not afraid of the weapons used to wage war, he said.

But Rocard moved onto trickier ground at a press conference when he began to question New Zealand’s anti nuclear stance.

“Now the fact that from such a friendly warm country like New Zealand ... a moral country ... should emerge the idea that we should get rid of the one weapon which we’re so scared of that we don’t use it, in order to fall back on the weapons that we’re used to, and therefore we use, is quite honestly such a weird idea that I have difficulty in

understanding it.”

(To be fair to the Prime Minister, “weird”, with its impolite hint of craziness, was his interpreter’s word. The milder “strange”, or “curious”, would have been a more accurate translation.) Now he was entitled to justify his country’s adherence to the principle of nuclear deterrence, and had, in fact, been invited to do so.

But I for one doubt the propriety of his questioning New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy a policy adopted by one party in government, endorsed by the people and reaffirmed by another party in government.

It is a policy that may seem strange or curious to others with a vested interest in the question, but one that is not at all strange or curious to those who believe in it, and that happens to be most New Zealanders.

As New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jim Bolger responded: “If France wishes to maintain an independent nuclear deterrent, we can’t prevent that.”

But, he went on, reverting to where w r e began: “We would much prefer that the tests were carried out on mainland France raather than in Pacific territories of France.”

The two Prime Minister inevitably had to agree to disagree on the issue, and the visit, the first by a French Prime Minister to New Zealand, was conducted in a spirit of remarkable bonhomie.

It was essentially a pilgrimage of atonement, allowing the French leader to formally apologise for the Rainbow Warrior bombing at the scene of the crime and to sign a friendship agreement, turning the page on a sad chapter in history.

But Rocard and the French in general left behind a sense that they are puzzled why New Zealanders continually refer to the Rainbow Warrior and nuclear testing. Rocard asked more than once why questioners could not talk about other issues on which the two nations agreed.

It seems that the French cannot understand the depth of feeling in New Zealand and the Pacific.

They do not appear to appreciate that it will take a long time for memories of the Rainbow Warrior to die in New Zealand, and a long time for Pacific people to forget the testing, when and if it stops, because they simply do not believe that they are safe.

As New Zealand’s Labour Party leader Mike Moore said: “The relationship will never be absolutely normal while France continues nuclear testing in the South Pacific.”

One of Rocard’s main reasons for coming here was to declare France’s continuing interest in the Pacific, to lay claim to a regional role for the Republic and its territories in the 21st century when the Asia-Pacific Rim will come into its own, and to assure the peoples of the region of French

goodwill.

There would be no better way of improving relations with the region and removing suspicion of French intentions than by stopping the tests or moving them to France.

One could even say that, from a Pacific perspective, there even exist some good psychological and political reasons for doing so. □