FRANCE: President Jacques Chirac has criticised "hoodlums" responsible for disasters at sea, as France extended emergency measures along its southern coast to control oil washing up from a sunken tanker off Spain.
Mr Chirac said he was "revolted" by the "ecological catastrophe" confronting France, and denounced "the shady businessmen, the hoodlums of the sea", who, he said, were taking advantage of the complexities of international shipping regulations. Promising that "everything is being done by the civilian and military authorities to tackle the situation," he sent Prime Minister Mr Jean-Pierre Raffarin to the affected Landes region.
The focus of the fight was patches of toxic fuel oil washing in from the sunken wreck of the Prestige, a Liberian-registered tanker that sank off north-west Spain on November 19th, releasing 20,000 tonnes of its cargo into the water.
The oil, which has already devastated Spain's Galicia and Asturias regions as well as northern Portugal, has been driven north towards France by high winds. Thousands of advance globules have landed as far as La Rochelle, a port city halfway up France's Atlantic coast.
But tests on some iridescent globules found farther north, on the chic islands of Ile de Re and Ile d'Oleron, have found that the problem is being compounded by captains of other ships, who are using the Prestige spill as cover to illegally empty tanks offshore.
A state of emergency, which allows the authorities to use warships and requisition civilian vessels to fight the pollution, was extended along France's entire Atlantic coast yesterday.
Mr Raffarin said an initial €50 million would be made available to fight the pollution.
Two trawlers fitted with equipment to scoop the oil from the water were to start work today on a large slick floating 100km off shore, coastguard officials said.
Another 30 vessels are to join them at a later date.
The affected beaches have been closed to the public, and the French government is set to take legal action "to seek out and punish those responsible for this environmental catastrophe".
France has been pushing for more stringent European Union laws against risky tankers and for more accountability from vessel crews, owners, operators and flag states ever since 1999, when another oil tanker, the Erika, sent a massive oil spill on to Brittany beaches.
Mr Chirac and the Spanish Prime Minister, Mr José-Maria Aznar, agreed on November 26th to ban from their territorial waters all single-hulled vessels more than 15 years old and carrying cargoes of fuel oil or tar.
Both France and Spain now want the entire 15-nation EU to adopt the measure and rapidly introduce legislation on prosecuting maritime polluters.
Spain yesterday created a new government post to deal with the fight against pollution following the sinking of the tanker.