GREENPEACE veteran David McTaggart's calls for a flotilla to sail to Mururoa Atoll, where nuclear tests are set to resume in September, looked like being answered yesterday as ships from New Zealand and Australia were getting ready to sail.
A Danish ship, the Bifrost, was already at the atoll shadowed by French gunships, said Mr McTaggart. About 10 ships from New Zealand and more than that from Australia, including a ship chartered by Australian MP Ian Cohen were set to form a flotilla.
Mr McTaggart said that ships should sail even if they did not wish to break the exclusion zone, to distract the French. He vowed to continue the campaign until the tests were called off.
Mr McTaggart, 63, who described himself as a 'healthy drinking, smoking son of a bitch', said the campaign to stop the testing should be worldwide.
He said about seven ships and a few inflatables would be enough to get past the French defences.
Mr McTaggart had just completed a 12-day adventure dodging French warships in an inflatable dinghy. 'It's easy to get on that atoll,' he said. 'They could not even find us. It's quite clear they can be had.' Mr McTaggart, a Canadian, and two co-activists, Australian Chris Robinson and Dutchman Henk Haazen, left the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior on July 8, a few hours before the French stormed the ship as it attempted to cross the 12 nautical-mile limit at Mururoa.
