4 ~- Sunday, July 14, 1985 - North Shore News FEAR COMING TRUE? France turnin to terrorism UP TO 50% OFF ! At up to haif-price! ELL OVER a decade ago, when protests W against French nuclear tests in the South Pacific began, there was a genuine fear that the brass somewhere up in the hierarchy of the French military establishment might decide to kill someone, rather than put up with unwanted inter- national attention on its nuclear fortress at Mururoa Atoll. sure. But that one loose stone During the time that David McTaggart was sailing his lone ‘sailboat into the test zone around the atoll, to challenge France's right to cordon off a huge tract of sea in order to carry out atmospheric atomic tests, French officers did sit down and evaluate the possibility of quietly sinking him. McTaggart learned this years later, in Paris, when he ‘was approached by anex-naval aide who was present during the discussion about whether to kill him, or at least sink him, or not. Ultimately, Navy sent a minesweeper to tam him, and when he per- sisted the following year, they sent in the commandoes, who beat him savagely. They might have got away with it, as a matter of fact, except that they went too far and left him almost blinded in one eye. That particular ‘‘bruise’’ didn't heal quick enough to avoid being detected by the world media. Now they’ve gone too far again. A Greenpeace crew- member is dead and the Rain- bow Warrior lies shattered from bomb blasts in Auckland harbor. With a single, murderous covert operation, the military masters of France’s nuclear program have finally done what many of them thought they should have done in the first place. I'm’ writing this just a day after the sinking of the Rain- bow Warrior — and so far no one has pointed a public finger at France. I don’t know why not. Who else? As the .crisis in New Caledonia shows, the old French colonial grip on large portions of the South Pacific is breaking. The Nuclear Free Pacific Movement has grown from an environmental cause celebre into the makings of a successful, if belated, war of independence. If France loses Mururoa or Tahiti, or even New Caledonia, which might start a political chain reaction, the late General DeGaulle’s vision of a French nuclear strike force comes to a dead halt. Where else will anybody let the French conduct their tests? Northern Quebec? Quite simply, the French military see their nuclear deterrent at peril. In the early stages of the long drawn-out protest cam- paign, the generals tended to write off the peaceniks who opposed them as long-haired foonies, and there was an ele- ment of that at the start, for set an avalanche in motion. Under pressure, France has turned to terrorism. It was ironic that the very week when President Reagan denouced several countries as being bases of terrorism, with them in tura denouncing him, and the airways still reverberating from the Air India horror, French frogmen should mount a clandestine attack on an unarmed vessel in a friendly by Bob Hunter port. There’s a double message, of course. Not just to the peaceniks, but to the New Zealand government as well. it was tiny New Zealand, after all, who sent naval vessels in- to the Mururoa test zone in the wake of McTaggart's original protest voyage. And it is again New Zealand in the forefront of the struggle against nuclear weapons, with her gutsy refusal to allow the U.S. Navy to enter her waters unless they declare whether their ships are nuclear or not, something the navy refuses to do. What next? Assassination? In case anyone thinks fora . minute that some “‘indepen- dent’’ terrorists were doing France's dirty work, don’t be silly. 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