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New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark sharply dismissed President Jacques Chirac's praise of the Pacific for allowing nuclear testing, saying it had been unsafe and unhealthy, it was reported Monday. Chirac said during a tour of French Pacific territories at the weekend that the testing in the South Pacific had played a role in safeguarding France's security. "When France brought its atmospheric testing to the South Pacific the standard response in New Zealand was to say, 'If it is so safe, why don't you do it at home?'," Clark was quoted as saying by the NZPA news agency. "I guess we still feel that way," she said in South Korea where she was attending a function to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of an armistice to end the Korean War. Clark said she did not accept Chirac's assurances, based on a study by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that the testing had had no effect on the short- or long-term health of people living around the test grounds. "My understanding is that the level of cancers reported would be greater than one would expect," she said. The testing was fiercely condemned by New Zealand and its neighbours, and Clark's Labour Party legislated in 1987 to make the country nuclear-free in the wake of vehemently anti-nuclear sentiment. "From New Zealand's point of view we are very pleased it is a chapter that has been closed," Clark said in South Korea. "As long as France tested nuclear weapons in the Pacific there were going to be a lot of issues between us and we can shut the door on that." Antagonism between the countries over France's nuclear tests at Muroroa Atoll in French Polynesia during the 1970s and 1980s culminated when French secret service agents bombed a Greenpeace protest ship, the Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland in 1985, killing a Portuguese photographer. France paid reparations and testing soon stopped, but it took many years before the two nations resumed normal relations again. Chirac ordered the resumption of French nuclear tests in the southern Pacific shortly after he was elected president in 1995. After a swift six-test campaign, the facilities were shut down completely a year later. All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. Quick Links
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