by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjong, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Thursday, September 7, 1995:
DAP condemns French resumption of nuclear tests and calls for United Nations General Assembly to adopt an emergency resolution to stop it from continuing with its series of eight tests till May next year
DAP condemns the French government’s resumption of nuclear tests and calls on the United Nations General Assembly when it meets later this month to adopt an emergency resolution to stop French President Chirac from continuing with the French series of eight tests till May next year.
Chirac had defied international opinion in going ahead with the resumption of French nuclear tests with the first under-ground testing in Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia yesterday.
The resumption of French nuclear tests has undermined efforts to create a nuclear weapon-free world, a blow to the early conclusion of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the banning of nuclear weapons and raises the spectre of a proliferation of nuclear tests by other countries as well as a proliferation of the number of nuclear-weapon states.
The French President should have carried out the nuclear tests in metropolitan France if he is convinced that they are harmless and will not cause any environmental damage to the eco-system of the South Pacific.
The French resumption of nuclear tests has created a most atmosphere for the United Nations to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its founding.
It is a had symbolism that in the past 50 years, the world has only moved from one nuclear mushroom – the mushrooms of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs in August 1945 – to another mushroom, this time the resumption of French nuclear tests in September 1995.
It raises the question whether the ending of the Cold War can really advance the cause of peace when France has to defy world opinion to resume nuclear tests.
It is most unfortunate that the Malaysian Parliament had failed to take the opportunity of its last meeting which ended on the eve of the resumption of French nuclear tests to register its protest and condemnation, although there was a motion specifically on the issue on the Parliamentary Order Paper in the name of the DAP MP for Kota Melaka, Lim Guan Eng.
The challenge to international society is how French President Chirac and the French Government could be made to bow to international opinion and to stop continuing with its series of another seven nuclear tests for the next nine months.
The Non-Aligned Conference should be in the international forefront to demand that the French government cancel all its other nuclear tests, and the Malaysian Government should take the initiative to ask for an emergency meeting of the Non-Aligned Conference to work out an international strategy towards this end.