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Did Mitterrand OK attack on
Greenpeace ship?
July 09 2005 at 03:31PM
Paris - The man who was in charge of France's DGSE intelligence service
when agents blew up a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand, killing a crew member,
says that then president Francois Mitterrand gave the go-ahead for the attack,
the Le Monde newspaper said on Saturday.
Twenty years after the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, which sank in Auckland harbour as it was due to investigate French nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific, Le Monde published extracts of a 23-page document written by DGSE chief Admiral Pierre Lacoste the following year. The document by Lacoste, who was sacked over the affair, represents the first official confirmation of Mitterrand's involvement in what the then New Zealand prime minister David Lange described "a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism". The Rainbow Warrior was in Auckland to head a
flotilla of protest boats to Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia in an attempt to
disrupt French nuclear testing, a source of discord between France on one hand
and New Zealand, Australia and other Pacific nations on the
other.
In the document published by Le Monde, Lacoste describes a meeting with
Mitterrand at 6pm on May 15, 1985, just under two months before the
attack.
"I asked the president if he would authorise me to conduct the project of neutralisation that I had studied at the request of (defence minister Charles) Hernu. He gave me his consent while emphasising the importance he placed on the nuclear tests," wrote Lacoste, then head of the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE). "I then went into great detail on the project, the authorisation was sufficiently explicit". Earlier on May 6, 1985, Lacoste had met with defence minister Hernu to outline the plan to sabotage the Greenpeace ship. "Far from being shocked by the idea of sabotage in the dock at Auckland", wrote the admiral "he made light of my reservations and encouraged me in that direction, repeating that it was an issue essential to defence policy". "They (Greenpeace) want to make war with us, we are at war, we mustn't have scruples on such vital subjects, I take full responsibility", the admiral quoted Hernu as saying. Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira drowned after going to his cabin between the two explosions which ripped open the hull of the Rainbow Warrior at the quayside in central Auckland. Two members of the 13-strong French secret service team which carried out the bombing, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were arrested by New Zealand police two days later as they returned their campervan to the rental company. By September that year France had been forced to admit its responsibility, defence minister Charles Hernu had resigned and Lacoste had been sacked. In November 1985, Mafart and Prieur pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges and were sentenced to 10 years in jail. French pressure to have the pair returned saw trade pressure applied to New Zealand, which relies heavily on agricultural exports to the European Union. Export shipments to France and its South Pacific territory of New Caledonia were held up or rejected. After UN mediation, a July 1986 agreement saw the agents released from jail in New Zealand for what was supposed to be three years exile on Hao atoll in French Polynesia. By the middle of 1988 both had been returned to France, a move which intensified New Zealand's bitterness towards the French government. http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=24&art_id=qw1120914541652E516 Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
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