A furious France turned its full attention to tackling oil slicks threatening its southwest beaches today, widening a state of alert and lashing out at the "hoodlums of the sea" it blames for a disaster that has already hit Spain and Portugal.
President Jacques Chirac led the charge, deploying Prime Minister Mr Jean-Pierre Raffarin to the affected Landes region and promising: "Everything is being done by the civilian and military authorities to tackle the situation."
The focus of the fight was glistening patches of toxic fuel oil washing in from the sunken wreck of the Prestige, a Liberian-registered tanker that sank off northwest Spain on November 19, 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 all along the coast as far as La Rochelle, a port city halfway up France's Atlantic coast.
But tests on some iridiscent 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 unscrupulous captains of other ships, who are using the Prestige spill to illegally empty tanks offshore in the hope that the pollution they cause will go undiscovered.
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 on Friday.
Two trawlers fitted with equipment to scoop the oil from the water were to start work on Saturday on a large slick floating 100 kilometres (60 miles) off shore, coastguard officials said. Another 30 vessels are to join them at a later date.
Mr Chirac said he was revolted by the "ecological catastrophe" confronting his country and railed against "the shady businessmen, the hoodlums of the sea", who he said were cynically taking advantage of the complexities of international shipping regulations. On Thursday, Mr Chirac's office announced the French government was taking legal action "to seek out and punish those responsible for this environmental catastrophe".
France has been pushing hard 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 Spanish Prime Minister Mr Jose-Maria Aznar agreed on November 26 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.
AFP