TAHITIANS UPSET ABOUT ATOM TESTS

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31005, 10 March 1966, Page 17

TAHITIANS UPSET ABOUT ATOM TESTS

(N.Z.PA. Reuter —Copyright)

PAPEETE (Tahiti) March 9.

President de Gaulle’s forthcoming H-bomb tests in the Pacific are arousing antagonism among Tahitians.

Officials at Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia, which has a population of 85,000 scattered over 130 islands, will not say when the first thermo-nuclear explosion will take place, although gossip on the “coconut radio” says it will be in July. The big bomb, which will make France the fourth member of the H-bomb club, will be exploded on the nowdepopulated atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa, 775 miles south-east of Papeete. Shipping has been banned from a huge area, and a French fleet with 8000 men embarked is expected about April. The Defence Minister. Pierre Messmer, was in Papeete in late February to inspect the test sites and other installations of the euphemis-tically-named C.E.P.—-Centre d’Experimentation du Pacifique. . At a press conference he gave no details as to the magnitude of the blast, the number of shots, the date, or the manner of detonation — whether dropped at high altitude, or e-xploded at ground

• level or underwater. 3 Mr Messmer, however, pro- , mised that fall-out would be J held to a safe level and that • no islander would be endant gered. ] He defended the work of the C.E.P., saying that it 1 opened a new “pathway of t

progress” for French Polynesians.

The claim provoked derisive laughter among Tahitians. Tahiti’s economy, formerly based on copra from coconuts, is now heavily dependent on tourists, 15,000 of whom came to Papeete in 1965. This is a tenfold increase in seven years, the result of the opening in 1961 of a jet landing strip. Prices are high and getting higher and copra production has fallen off because Tahitians prefer the higher wages for pick-and-shovel work by the C.E.P. They' believe the presence of so many soldiers, sailors and foreign legionnaires—-

there are an estimated 8000 to 10,000 military here—tends to discourage tourism. A leading island opponent of the atomic experiments is John Teariki, who has represented French Polynesia for five terms in the National Assembly in Paris. President de Gaulle has ignored four written protests and personal pleas from a Tahitian delegation, Mr Teariki said.

“And what happens to us when the bomb tests are finished in a few years and the C.E.P. goes away?” he asked. “We shall be worse off than we were before."