Un criterio alternativo sin salirse del ámbito de los cuadriláteros

French military policy. Three main reasons underlie its policy. First, France perceives itself as an independent middle power, therefore, the development o f an effective nuclear deterrent is a central element in French defence policy. Secondly, French Polynesia is termed by France as overseas territory and according to French law, overseas territories are treated as part o f France and not as colonies or dependencies. That is why the French government always argue that the

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tests are being undertaken on French soil and should not be the business o f other states. Any objections to the tests by some countries were seen as interfering in French internal affairs.4 For Pacific independent states, however, French Polynesia is seen as a colony,5 especially after mid- 1960 when France started to conduct its nuclear tests.6 To conduct the tests in a colony, as many Islanders argue, means a violation o f the important international principle stipulated in the UN Charter: the right of colonised peoples to self-determination. France has also failed to respond to a request by the local Territorial Assembly that tests not be carried out in French Polynesia.7 And thirdly, the French government contends that the tests are safe.8 It claims that the level o f radiation released into the ocean or the atmosphere is harmless.

The Tuamotu Group in French Polynesia was chosen b> b m : c! i h as a nuclear test site in 1957 after Algeria gained independence. For France, the Sahara had been ideal because it was remote from populated areas, it had an airport capable of handling large transport

in I960.

planes and it was relatively close to France. After Algeria’s independency the Tuamotu Group was the obvious replacement, and it was chosen without prior consultation with the inhabitants

4. Interview with George Martins, Deputy Head of Mission, French Embassy, Wellington after his presentation entitled 'The Role of France in the South Pacific’ in the South Pacific Conference, held by the University of Otago’s Foreign Policy School, Dunedin, New Zealand, 11-14 May 1990.

s. However, France is fortunate, because French Polynesia is, in fact, not included on the list of the UN Special Committee on the Implementation of the Declaration on Decolonisation (Committee of 24). South Pacific Territories ( south of equator) included on the list are: American Samoa, New Caledonia, Pitcairn, Tokelau, while the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands falls within the responsibility of the Security Council. See The Monthly Record, Canberra, August 1990, p.558.

6. Before that period, the native Polynesian people never felt that they were colonised, because the native people and the French lived harmoniously. After the test programme started a lot of changes happened in all ways of life, the socio-culture, economic system, land ownership, etc. This information is from by Bengt Danielson, a historian as well as anthropologist who has lived there for more than 40 years. Interviewed by the author in his'working room in Papeete, French Polynesia, 21 October 1991.

7. See Stephen Bates, ‘France and the South Pacific Island Countries: early Hostility towards France 1960-1970’, p.2. A paper delivered at the International Conference on ‘France in the Pacific: Past, Present, Future’, conducted at the Australian National University, 22-25 January 1991.

8. Statement by the French Ambassador to Australia, H.E. Mr. Jean-Bemard Merimee in 28 August 1983. See Transcript, ‘Decolonisation and Nuclear Weapons as Treated by the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Conference and by the South Pacific Forum’, p.10. The Transcript is kept in the Parliamentary Library of Australia, Canberra.

of French Polynesia.9 Protests through the local Territorial Assembly were fruitless, because ‘the Territorial Assembly has no power on the decision making process, all are made in Paris by the central government’.10

There are also other grounds for objecting to the tests, of course. The Islanders believed that the tests pose a threat to the health and livelihood of the people in the whole South Pacific region. At the first Forum meeting in 1971, the heads of government:

expressed their concern at the potential hazards that atmospheric tests pose to health and safety and to marine life which is a vital element in the Islands’ subsistence and economy and addressed an urgent appeal to the Government of France that the current test series should be the last in the Pacific areas.11

The tests conducted underground from 1975 were in common sense less risky than atmospheric tests conducted previously. The obvious danger of radioactive fall-out had been replaced by the far less visible and seemingly more remote risk of radioactive leakage through cracks in the underwater base of the atoll into the surrounding ocean.12 And if such leaks were to occur, these could contaminate the fish and other animate and inanimate material which would then be dispersed by ocean currents and migration patterns to islands thousand of kilometres away.

France has stated on many occasions that the tests do not endanger the area, although several accidents have, in fact, already happened. For example in 1979 two French workers were killed in an explosion in an underground laboratory. Less than three weeks later, part of Moruroa collapsed in the wake of a nuclear test explosion, causing a tidal wave. In March 1983 a hurricane was reported to have swept nuclear waste stored on Moruroa into the lagoon of the atoll and then out into the Pacific.13 France has denied reports in the international press that there has been an increased incidence of cancer in the local population. The French Defence Minister, Charles Hemu, in July 1984, after receiving the Report by five scientists from New Zealand, Australia and Papua New Guinea who visited the atoll in 1983, claimed in a press

9. Details on the history o f French nuclear testing in French Polynesia and other related issues can be found in