PRESIDENT Jacques Chirac travels to Washington today armed with his new found credentials as a campaigner for world nuclear disarmament. He announced the end of all French nuclear testing on Monday, two days after France's sixth test explosion in the South Pacific since September.
The President clearly intends to use this new virtue as a means of negotiating defence issues on an equal footing with the US.
His Defence Minister, Mr Charles Millon, reiterated yesterday that France would now work for a complete end to all nuclear testing in the world, with a veiled criticism aimed at the US.
"We said in advance that this would be our last series of tests and we would stop them completely afterwards, but others said "We are stopping tests but we may continue them a bit" he said.
He was referring to the French view that the US may try to seek a loophole in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty now being negotiated in Geneva to allow Washington to resume tests for miniaturised weapons or in exceptional circumstances. Mr Millon said the tests had been "a 100 per cent success" and would allow France to replace blasts with computer simulation.
President Chirac will propose an equal partnership between Europe and the US on European security during his three day visit, his spokeswoman, Ms Catherine Colonna, said.
He would discuss with President Clinton "the new European and transatlantic security architecture for the 21st century."
Meanwhile, the international community continued to give a cautious welcome to France's announcement.
While EU member states expressed polite enthusiasm, many Asian and Pacific nations remained indignant about Mr Chirac's volte face.
The German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, praised Mr Chirac for not carrying out two further tests originally scheduled. "President Chirac has thus kept his word by completing the series of tests at the earliest moment possible," he said.
The Australian Prime Minister, Mr Paul Keating, said "The fact, that he has announced their cessation is welcome, but they should never have been announced in the first place."
The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Mr Jim Bolger, said the Pacific would be watching France "with a careful eye for some years now to see whether or not there's anything else they're going to go back on."
A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mr Grigory Karasin, said Russia greeted the news "with satisfaction", adding that it saw a moratorium on experiments on nuclear weapons as "a great contribution to ending all nuclear tests."
Among the five official nuclear powers only China said that, while it noted France's decision, it would continue to pursue its nuclear tests until the Complete Test Ban Treaty came into operation, arguing that it had done fewer tests than other states.
The coral atoll test centres of Mururoa and Fangataufa, where France has carried out its nuclear blasts since the late l960s, are to be dismantled, it emerged yesterday, after the president of the French Polynesian government, Mr Gaston Flosse, met President Chirac in Paris.
After discussions on the future of the 130 islands whose economies have largely depended on the bomly for 30 years, Mr Flosse said" that France had promised to pay nearly a billion francs a year to Polynesia for the next 10 years while they reconverted to tourism, fishing and agriculture for their post nuclear future.
Meanwhile in French Polynesian authorities hailed a new era, and spoke of the "excesses" of Australia, New Zealand and the Greenpeace pressure group.
The head of the Polynesian independence movement, Mr Oscar Temaru, said Mr Chirac was "bequeathing us two nuclear waste bins as a legacy that will remain forever frozen in the belly of our Mother Earth."