France mulled using virus on Greenpeace - report
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(c) 1995 Copyright The News and Observer Publishing Co.
(c) 1995 Reuter Information Service
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PARIS (Sep 11, 1995 - 10:54 EDT) - French secret agents wanted to inject Greenpeace anti-nuclear militants with a virus able to trigger diarrhoea or yellow fever a decade ago to prevent them from sailing to the South Pacific, a newspaper said on Monday.
The authoritative French daily Le Monde, quoting sources close to the country's DGSE intelligence services, said the 1985 project was ultimately scuttled in favour of electronic jamming of Greenpeace communications once they reached France's nuclear testing site.
The virus project was turned down primarily because it was too radical a move coming after the DGSE's sinking of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand three months earlier.
A Defence Ministry spokesman said his office had no immediate comment.
The virus project was aimed against the crew of the M.V. Greenpeace when it was docked in Curacao in the Dutch West Indies in September 1985, Le Monde said.
The regional DGSE station chief and his local agent had arranged with accomplices in the local administration for the Greenpeace crew to be ordered to undergo innoculations on the pretext of new health regulations.
"A virus would have been innoculated which would have provoked serious diarrhoea, yellow fever and delayed the ship's departure," the newspaper wrote.
The agents finally bribed local officials to delay delivery of the ship's communications equipment, enabling the French to study the equipment and later hamper the ship's transmissions, Le Monde said.
Greenpeace has been a thorn in France's side for years over Paris' nuclear testing programme.
The group's activists have played a key role in organising protests around the world against France's decision to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific earlier this month.