French Board Greenpeace Ship Near Nuke Test Site

Eight French military men boarded and seized the Greenpeace protest yacht Vega early today after it entered territorial waters around France’s Pacific nuclear test site at Mururoa Atoll hours before a scheduled test, Greenpeace said.

French Premier Laurent Fabius was in Mururoa for the test along with a high-level delegation.

Greenpeace spokesman Gerd Leipold said that eight French military men boarded the Vega from a rubber raft at 4:42 a.m. (7:42 a.m. PDT) and ordered the four-person crew below deck. A Greenpeace spokesman in Washington said the vessel was presumably being taken to Tahiti or another French possession in the South Pacific.

Leipold said his last message from Vega radio operator Peter Wilcox was: “The situation is calm.”

‘Stop or Heave to’

French Navy boats in the area had launched the inflatable raft minutes before the boarding and, using signal flags, messaged: “Stop or heave to. I’m sending a boat.”

The Vega was situated six to nine nautical miles from Mururoa at the time, putting it three to six nautical miles inside the 12-mile limit.

The crew of the Vega are Chris Robinson of Australia; Wilcox, the American captain of the protest ship Rainbow Warrior sunk by a bomb in Auckland, New Zealand; Grace O’Sullivan of Ireland, and New Zealander Sue Ware.

In Paris, official sources said the underground test was scheduled for 9 a.m. today in Mururoa (noon PDT) and that, contrary to the usual secrecy, the blast would be formally announced two or three hours later.

Fabius arrived Wednesday in Mururoa with Defense Minister Paul Quiles, Secretary of State for Natural and Technological Risks Haroun Tazieff, a bipartisan parliamentary delegation and a small group of journalists.

It was Fabius who admitted that French secret agents blew up the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland July 10. The explosion killed a Portuguese-born Dutch photographer, Fernando Pereira.

Questioned by reporters today, the French premier said he had come to Mururoa “to show that our nuclear tests have no harmful effects on the environment.”