Come down from podium

MR Laurent Aublin, the French Consul-General in Hong Kong, has repeatedly defended the nuclear tests that have already begun at Mururoa Atoll.

For example, in the South China Morning Post, on July 10, he was reported as saying, they were safe and 'will have absolutely no impact on life'.

This viewpoint is about as scientifically sound as saying that hitting a snail with a hammer will not harm the snail.

Not surprisingly, Mr Aublin's views on his Government's explosion of nuclear weapons in the Pacific are refuted by one of France's most eminent professors.

The so-called scientists who gave Mr Aublin and his President the 'harmless bomb' information are either lying for France, totally ignorant, totally arrogant or non-existent.

Recently, Professor Pierre Vincent, professor emeritus at the Blaise Pascal University and a member of the Centre of Volcanological Research (a world famous institution), said that President Chirac was unlikely to have been told that the extinct volcano called Mururoa could fracture at any time.

Professor Vincent stated in the French newspaper Le Monde that, 'the risk of a sudden opening of the system during a test, due to a flank of the island sliding into the sea, has hardly been considered'.

Clearly, Mr Aublin is either not supplied with relevant scientific information or, due to his respect for President Chirac, is blind to the misadventure at Mururoa.

Perhaps more sinister ecological-economic motives are behind France's nuclear stupidity in the South Pacific? Perhaps, by increasing levels of environmental Strontium 90 - an evil radioactive substitute for calcium - France hopes to destroy New Zealand's clean and green image by contaminating Kiwi dairy products or Samoan shellfish? But the current French evil may go even deeper than this form of ecological warfare.

Has France told the PRC that if we do it (nuclear testing) you can too; but as a reward for opening the evil environmental door to nuclear testing again, PRC Chinese must give French businessmen some lucrative contracts? Laurent Aublin come down from your French podium before it's too late and help to restore your country's respect and your consulate's respectability.

By the way Mr Aublin, if you are tempted to label me as some leftist academic then you're wrong.

I am a thinking academic and a former soldier in the New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS).

Would Mr Aublin like to debate the issue with me at a public forum? Dr GORDON S. MAXWELL Lecturer Environmental Studies Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong