Greenpeace fires salvo at N.Z.

Press, 4 February 1986, Page 8

Greenpeace fires salvo at N.Z.

NZPA-Reuter Sydney

The Greenpeace Antarctic expedition director has attacked treaty members.

As the expedition headed for New Zealand after giving up plans to dump equipment because of pack ice, the director, Mr Peter Wilkinson, said countries such as New Zealand should realise that the continent did not belong to them. He also said Greenpeace had just as much right to be there as they did.

Members of both the present Greenpeace expedition and the recent British Footsteps of Scott team were ejected from the base. “The spirit of co-opera-tion on Antarctic exists but when you get up to the higher echelons of Government officialdom it just sours the whole atmosphere,” Mr Wilkinson said. The Greenpeace, which

left Sydney in midDecember to establish the first private research base on the southern continent, was criticised by the New Zealand, Australian and United States Governments, which x said the boat was ill-equipped.

The crew stepped on to the Ice late last week to declare the continent a world park, but unseasonably heavy pack ice prevented passage to McMurdo Sound.

"Given the right conditions, the boat is okay and if we had come down here last year, we would have gone through without meeting any ice,” Mr Wilkinson said. The worst Antarctic summer pack ice for 30 years crushed and sank the British expedition’s support ship Southern Quest in mid-January near where the Greenpeace was trying to find its way to McMurdo Sound. Further reports, pages 2 and 3.