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Editorial

This week's cover symbolises Salient's position on the forthcoming French nuclear tests.

In a few weeks the frigate 'Otago' will set sail for Mururoa atoll, bearing Defence Minister Arthur Faulkner, to make New Zealand's final protest against the tests.

The Labour Party has made the protest against French tests a showpiece of its foreign policy. While Kirk has refused to cut off diplomatic relations with France he has adopted all the other demands of the antibomb campaign.

The main issue at stake is not the pollution caused by the tests or French insistence on developing nuclear weapons. The demand that France should be denied nuclear weapons in effect supports continued American and Soviet monopoly of these weapons, which is the basis for the two powers arrogant, imperialist foreign policies.

The nuclear tests on Mururoa atoll symbolise the continuation of French colonialism in the South Pacific. The persistent demands of the people of France's Pacific colonies for political independence have been rejected by the government in Paris. The same stubborn attitude that sparked off the Indochina war in the 1940s threatens to provoke bitter conflict in the South Pacific.

While the nuclear teste issue remains at the centre of public attention New Zealanders who believe in the right of all people to self-determin-ation should demand that France get out of the South Pacific.