Australians Stiffen Resistance to A-Tests : Protest: French plans for South Pacific stir a rising--and somewhat surprising--tide of objections Down Under.

The graffiti screeched, “No to the Frogs.” Perfume and cognac sales plummeted. Newspaper columnists unleashed a flurry of invective against “Napoleonic arrogance.” Sydney’s annual Cointreau Ball was canceled on Bastille Day. And zealots burned down the offices of the honorary French consul in Perth.

Not only did this recent anti-French furor in Australia over the planned resumption of nuclear testing in the Pacific surprise France, it surprised Australians as well.

Australia is leading the Pacific campaign against French nuclear tests, an effort that culminated in the diplomatic insult of both countries recalling their ambassadors. The role is unusual for Australia and may reflect a new sense of independence for a country that once regarded itself as an outpost of Britain in the Pacific.

The role hardly seemed likely when the issue arose two months ago.

In fact, when French President Jacques Chirac announced in mid-June that his country would conduct eight underground tests in French Polynesian atolls beginning in September, the reaction of the government of Prime Minister Paul Keating was muted.

Foreign Minister Gareth Evans even acknowledged at a news conference in Tokyo that the announcement was not as bad as it could have been.

While describing the French plans as “deeply disappointing,” Evans noted that Chirac had promised to stop the testing after this round and join in negotiating a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. “That is a very important difference from the situation the last time around when these tests were under way,” the foreign minister said.

Evans pointed out that underground tests are not as dangerous to health as atmospheric tests. And he dismissed a proposal to send a frigate toward Mururoa atoll, site of the tests, as “adolescent grandstanding of the worst kind.”

In line with this mood, Keating protested to France but announced that his government would do little more than “freeze cooperation between Australia and France in the defense field at its existing level.” The two countries would still cooperate in such activities as disaster relief and maritime surveillance. Any proposals for new defense agreements or joint exercises, however, would be put on hold.

But the stance of Keating, Evans and the rest of the government struck opposition parties, many members of their own Australian Labor Party, the strident press, angry environmentalists and, most important, the Australian public as limp and mild. The stance could not hold very long.

Newspapers castigated the French with almost gleeful fury. Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of the national newspaper the Australian, wrote that France, unlike Britain, has never been able to face the fact that it is no longer a global power. “Now, as nothing more than a troublesome middle power,” he said, “the only way France can gain the sort of attention it craves is through perpetrating acts of outrage.”

Playwright Bob Ellis wrote in Sydney’s Telegraph Mirror that the French “are a dense and arrogant people, idle, pretentious and rabbit-slaughtering, all of the men identical, as Gore Vidal so rightly noted--pot belly, green skin, stubble, limp cigarette on long wet underlip unlit but somehow dribbling ash in acres.”

Franca Arena, a member of New South Wales’ state legislative council, and some colleagues were entertaining South African legislators aboard a cruise ship in Sydney harbor on the day Chirac announced the resumption of French tests. That was when she came up with the idea that legislators should steam toward the French testing site at Mururoa in protest.

Arena, a member of Keating’s party, ignored his tepid response to France’s plans and soon joined another New South Wales legislator, Ian Cohen, a member of the Green Party, in organizing a shipload of 60 lawmakers from 16 countries, accompanied by 40 reporters.

Arena said they plan to assemble in French Tahiti for a rally Sept. 2, then sail aboard a chartered ship--dubbed “For the Planet”--toward Mururoa, stopping short, however, of the 12-mile limit patrolled by French warships.

The French announcement also stirred Greenpeace into action.

The international environmental and anti-nuclear organization, which has a strong following in Australia, has kept Australia’s attention focused on the tests. In mid-July, its Rainbow Warrior II, with five Australians aboard, was prevented from entering Mururoa atoll by a French warship. The French rammed the vessel, stormed aboard and fired tear gas into the hold, forcing everyone on deck. After several hours of questioning, the French allowed the Rainbow Warrior II and its crew to leave the area.

Despite French insistence that the nuclear tests will release no radiation and cause no perceptible damage to the atolls or their mountains, Greenpeace mounted a campaign with posters depicting a Polynesian woman wearing a gas mask and carrying an asphyxiated child.

Labor unions stepped up the pressure on the Keating government by demanding reprisals against the French. Union members refused to refuel Air France planes for a day and disrupted mail deliveries to the French Embassy in the Australian capital, Canberra.

Within a week, the Keating government succumbed and put itself in the forefront against the French.

Over the next few weeks, the government recalled its ambassador from Paris for consultations, protested the possible use of “excessive force” by the French in boarding the Rainbow Warrior II, donated $150,000 for the legislators’ protest vessel and prohibited the French aerospace company Dassault Aviation from bidding on a $500-million contract to supply aircraft to the Australian military.

France, in turn, accused Australia of “hard hostility,” recalled its own ambassador, threatened to cancel contracts for the purchase of Australian coal and offered to stop buying uranium if the Australians wanted to break that contract.

The gesture on uranium was “a classic bit of Gallic cheek,” said Evans, the foreign minister. Environmentalists would like Australia to stop uranium sales to France. But government officials insist that Australian uranium is used only by France’s nuclear power industry. Moreover, it is sold to France at a price higher than the world market price.

Peter Garrett, lead singer of the Australian rock group Midnight Oil and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the reasons behind the public’s intense reaction are “quite complex.” But he and other Australians offered three main reasons:

* First, Australians resent the risk of contamination so close to home. Although the Mururoa atoll is 4,000 miles from their coast, they find themselves identifying with the South Pacific as their natural environment. “If France must test these weapons,” Keating said in a letter to the French newspaper Le Monde, “let her test them in metropolitan France.”

* Second, Australians feel anger and shock over a revival of Cold War memories. They had believed that the French were through with their nuclear testing and feel betrayed by the resumption.

* Third, and perhaps most significant, Australians feel like exercising a newly discovered sense of independence and self-confidence that is reflected in the country’s movement toward the status of a republic.

Much like Canada, Australia is still loyal to the British monarchy. Although Australia is a parliamentary democracy with a government headed by a prime minister, Queen Elizabeth II reigns as head of state through a governor general.

Keating has started the process of breaking this tie to the queen and turning Australia into a republic. Polls show that 50% to 60% of the public supports the change.

This sense of independence is enhanced by the growing number of non-British immigrants to a multicultural Australia.

It is probably no accident that Franca Arena, who came to Australia from Italy 35 years ago, is both a strong advocate of the republic and a leader of the parliamentary protest ship.

She paused in a public room of Parliament House in Sydney one recent afternoon and pointed to a new portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. “That is a fine portrait,” she said. “But it shouldn’t be there.”