Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 6, 1995 TAG: 9509060143
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PAPEETE, TAHITI LENGTH: Medium
International criticism was swift and severe. ``This is not the action of a good international citizen,'' Australia's foreign minister, Gareth Evans, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
The blast on Mururoa Atoll ended a three-year French moratorium on nuclear tests that had been joined by all of the world's nuclear powers except China, which set off an underground nuclear blast Aug. 17.
France says it plans to carry out up to eight nuclear tests.
Ships carrying environmental protesters are surrounding Mururoa. Two former British commandos were arrested Tuesday after making it through tight French security and reaching the atoll. One had spent the night there.
The blast took place at 12:30 p.m. (5:30 p.m. EDT) in a tunnel bored 1,800 to 3,000 feet below Mururoa, military spokesman Col. Abel Moittier said.
The crew of the Greenpeace vessel Manutea, in international waters near Mururoa, felt nothing during the test and only learned of it later by radio reports, a crew member told the New Zealand Press Association.
Signs of the underground blasts are visible only from around the Mururoa lagoon, which heaves and foams as the shock wave lashes the water.
In Papeete, a small group of protesters rattled the gates of the French High Commission, while 18 police officers - 12 of them in riot gear - watched from inside the compound. About 20 people were arrested during the protests.
The blast equaled less than 20,000 tons of TNT, the French Defense Ministry announced. By comparison, the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was equal to about 15,000 tons of TNT.
by CNB