January 29, 1996
Web posted at: 6:10 p.m. EST (2310 GMT)
PARIS (CNN)-- French President Jacques Chirac announced an early end to his country's disputed nuclear weapons tests Monday, making last Saturday's powerful blast the final one.
In a short televised statement, Chirac said France will take initiatives on disarmament and European defense in the coming weeks.
"My dear compatriots, I announce to you today the definitive halt to French nuclear tests," Chirac said on state-run television Monday night.
"Thanks to the final series which has just been carried out, France will have at its disposal a viable and modern defense. The security of our country and our children is assured."
France began a series of tests in the South Pacific with a Sept. 5 blast beneath Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, causing protests around the world.
That detonation, similar in size to the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, broke a three- year international moratorium on nuclear testing. It also made France the only nation besides China to actively test weapons of mass destruction since 1992.
Pressure had been mounting on Chirac at home to call off future testing. French trade in the South Pacific lost some ground, and Paris's diplomatic ties with Asian nations and many of its European partners were shaken. Chirac appeared eager to repair damaged relations with South Pacific nations.
"The image of our country has suffered," France's largest labor union, the General Labor Confederation, said Monday. "This test has to be the last."
France had defended its testing of the bombs, saying it had to check its nuclear arsenal and develop computer simulation that would make actual detonations unnecessary in the future.
"I know that nuclear weaponry may cause fear, but in an always dangerous world, it acts for us as a weapon of dissuasion, a weapon in the service of peace," Chirac said.
While the testing outraged Australia, New Zealand and other South Pacific countries, it did not elicit a strong negative response from France's major allies such as the United States, Britain and Germany.
Chirac settled the nuclear testing issue before his planned trip Thursday to the United States.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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