January 29, 1996: France Halts Nuclear Testing
The French President, Jacques Chirac, has said France will no longer test nuclear weapons.
The announcement comes a day after France exploded its sixth and biggest nuclear device in the South Pacific.
There have been international protests including boycotts of French products since Mr Chirac announced the resumption of testing last June.
In a live broadcast to the nation, Mr Chirac said the tests mean that “the safety of our country and of our children is assured.”
Early end
He has stopped the planned programme of eight tests early in the face of the outcry at home and abroad.
“I know the decision I made last June may have provoked, in France and abroad, anxiety and emotion,” he said. “But in an ever-dangerous world, [nuclear weapons] act as a weapon of dissuasion, a weapon in the service of peace.”
France will now sign an agreement for a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific this year, as well as the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which unconditionally ends all future tests.
However, critics of the test programme believe France has damaged the future of the test ban treaty by encouraging nations like India, Pakistan and China to take a harder line.
Mr Chirac’s popularity ratings have fallen to an all-time low for a new president since he announced his intention to reverse the three-year moratorium on testing established by his predecessor, Francois Mitterrand.
Clashes
During the tests at Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls, French naval vessels clashed with Greenpeace campaigners, confiscating their equipment and arresting crew members.
As well as being unpopular at home, the nuclear tests have brought French relations with several other countries to an all-time low.
Protests in Australia, New Zealand and other South Pacific countries have been particularly vehement, sometimes ending in violence, and Japan and several European countries have also objected strongly.
Only Britain has spoken out in defence of France’s right to carry out the explosions.
The tests made France the only country apart from China to test weapons of mass destruction since 1992.
Yesterday’s test, carried out at Fangataufa atoll, was equivalent to approximately 120,000 tonnes of conventional explosives, or six times the force of the bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.
