Media Release from ACDN

20 February 2006

President Chirac is not content with threatening to nuke whoever might attack France "vital interests" as defined by himself. He also looks after France’s commercial interests. These luckily coincide with the interests of the French nuclear and military-industrial lobbies.

Now he’s in India, preparing the ground there for the sale of nuclear power plants by AREVA (whose president is already rubbing her hands) and for sales of military material.

We wager that the final communiqué from these eminent negotiations will be almost a carbon-copy of the one issued last year at the end of the Indian PM’s visit to France (Sept. 12):

The two parties agree to recognise that nuclear technology is a source of reliable, ecologically viable and sustainable energy, and that we must deepen international cooperation in order to promote the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."

So it’s a "source of reliable energy". As reliable as the 105 000 cubic metres of Gironde water which on 27 Dec. 1999 flooded the plant at Blaye; as reliable as the flooding a year ago, triggered by the tsunami, of the Indian plant and military research reactor at Kalpakkam.
As "ecologically viable" as the 80 tonnes of plutonium salvaged and stocked at the "retreatment" centre at La Hague (Normandy). As "sustainable" as the 250 000 years of radioactive life of the aforesaid plutonium, which could make 15 000 bombs like the Nagasaki one.

This "bilateral cooperation for peaceful purposes" is as peaceful as the "Scorpène" submarines and "Mirage" airplanes which France is selling to India, or the coming joint manoeuvres of the "Charles de Gaulle" off the Indian coast, before she turns back to enter the Persian Gulf in April, doubtless in time to support a US offensive against the equally "peaceful" nuclear facilities in Iran.

Their "firm commitment to preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" is all the more credible because France and India have given the world exemplary cases of nations which renounced their own nuclear weapons...

In the terms of the advisory opinion given by the International Court of Justice on 8 July 1996, the leaders of the nuclear powers which keep their nuclear weapons are acting outside of international law, and they are criminals against humanity according to the definition of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Such then are these two men engaged in talks, last year in Paris, today in New Delhi. The fact that their military-nuclear deals are meant to be lucrative is irrelevant: they are conspiring against humanity.

The Clemenceau adventure turned comical. This one, which is being prepared for us with the same lucidity, could become tragic. Never mind: "Long live the Republic! Long live France!"

And let’s not forget, this is the "France of Human Rights". That gives France’s Master the right to do whatever.

French text of the Joint communiqué Jacques Chirac-Manhoman Singh of 12 Sept 2005

English text of the Joint declaration of 20 February 2006