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Blast very soon,

says France

PAPEETE, (Tahiti): France said on Monday resumed nuclear testing in the South Pacific was "very close" as New Zealand and Cook Islands politicians handed an angry note to the French navy from a protest boat off the test site.

As tension mounted at Mururoa Atoll, the environmental group Greenpeace finalised plans for its protest flotilla in its bid to prevent the resumption of testing after vowing to breach a 12-mile (20-km) military exclusion zone.

"There is no doubt that we are very close now to the beginning of the campaign," the commander of French test sites in the South Pacific, General Paul Vericel, said from the atoll, about 750 miles (1,200 km) south of here.

"We are now doing preparations to make our experiments from September 1," Vericel told Reuters by telephone.

French atomic energy officials said one of the nuclear explosions would be weapon strength - almost 150 kilotons.-Reuter