French Plan Early Expulsions for Crew of Seized Greenpeace Vessel

The crew of a Greenpeace protest vessel seized by the French navy near the site of a controversial nuclear test will be “rapidly expelled” from French Polynesia, the high commissioner’s office said Friday.

Members of Greenpeace, an international environmental group, acknowledged that their yacht Vega had broken the law Thursday by sailing inside the 12-mile territorial limit around Mururoa Atoll, where an underground nuclear test was carried out three hours later.

“We broke the law,” said Melanie Shanahan, a Greenpeace spokeswoman in Australia. “They had every right to arrest us. We entered the territorial limit of Mururoa when we were warned not to.”

She said Greenpeace was trying to show that nuclear testing “does not respect” international boundaries.

“There may be a 12-mile limit, but the fallout doesn’t respect that. So why should we?” she said.

Boarded by Military

Greenpeace spokesman Gerd Leopold said eight French military men boarded the Vega from a rubber raft before dawn Thursday and ordered the crew members below. The Vega was between six and nine miles from Mururoa at the time.

The protest yacht was towed to Mururoa, and its four crew members were being taken to the island of Hao, where there is a major airport, for expulsion from the French South Pacific island territory.

High Commissioner Bernard Gerard said the Vega’s skipper, Australian Chris Robinson, still is subject to an expulsion order dating from his last protest voyage to Mururoa in 1982.

The other three--Peter Wilcox, former captain of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior, sunk by French agents in New Zealand; Grace O’Sullivan of Ireland and Sue Wear of New Zealand--will be issued orders expelling them within 48 hours, he said.

The French Defense Ministry in Paris said the nuclear test was successful. French Premier Laurent Fabius witnessed the test from an observation bunker and Defense Minister Paul Quiles was in a helicopter hovering above the test site.

French television Friday showed shots of Fabius and a bipartisan group of French lawmakers swimming in the atoll’s lagoon after the test to demonstrate that there was no risk of radioactivity.