Rascals in Paradise

Agents of the French intelligence service seem to have been caught red-handed in a murderous sortie into New Zealand. New Zealanders are furious, and all that France has to show for its caper are a dead photographer, a sunken ship and another big problem for the U.S.-Australian defense alliance in the South Pacific.

France is cranking up for a series of nuclear-weapons tests on Muraroa atoll in French Polynesia. Such tests are strenuously opposed by New Zealand, Australia and various island nations in the South Pacific that are working to establish a nuclear-free zone in the region.

The Rainbow Warrior, flagship of the Greenpeace environmental movement, was in the area to lead demonstrations against the tests when it was blown up and sunk by saboteurs in Auckland on July 10. One crewman was killed.

It developed that the General Directorate of External Security, France’s equivalent of the CIA, was almost certainly involved. Mainstream French newspapers, including the influential Le Monde, report that a French-speaking couple arrested and charged with murder and sabotage were in fact agents of the French.

France has not acknowledged any involvement, but an investigation ordered by President Francois Mitterrand is under way. The prevailing view in Paris is that high-level officials must have known of the operation. To quote Le Monde, “The plot, since its conception, was coordinated from one moment to the next” by French intelligence.

As things stand, Greenpeace plans to send another vessel to the Pacific to replace the Rainbow Warrior, and the French navy is said to be under orders to use whatever force is necessary to prevent interference with the nuclear tests.

From the U.S. viewpoint the worst thing about the incident is that it feeds the already-virulent anti-nuclear sentiment in the South Pacific--sentiment that is reflected in the squabble between the United States and New Zealand over the visit of nuclear-capable warships to New Zealand ports. Australia opposes French testing but not visits by nuclear-armed U.S. warships.

The French obviously consider the continuing nuclear tests to be militarily necessary, but the assault on the Rainbow Warrior was outrageous, and nothing that France has said or done since has made it less so.

France used to be renowned for the skills of its diplomats. But these skills have gone largely unused during the years of sporadic nuclear testing in the South Pacific. It is time that they were brought back into play in a way that shows the nations of the region more than cool indifference.