950804

Japan urges

France, China

to halt N tests

TOKYO: Japan's parliament passed a resolution on Friday demanding that France and China halt nuclear tests, Lower House Speaker Takako Doi said.

China's underground tests this year and plans by France to resume testing in the Southern Pacific threaten both the environment and global treaties designed to curtail nuclear weapons, the resolution said.

The resolution was passed unanimously by the 511-member Lower House, the more decisive of the two chambers in Japan's parliament, and was expected to be approved by the 252-member Upper House later in the day.

"The fact that France has decided to resume nuclear testing, following China's underground nuclear tests, is an act that destroys the global environment...and threatens the existence of humanity, regardless of the reasons given and whatever conditions are placed on carrying it out," it said.

The document said nuclear testing by the two countries also threatened two treaties -- the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, renewed last May, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to be adopted next year.

It was Japan's first such resolution to name specific countries in the text. On Thursday, parties in Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama's ruling coalition agreed with the opposition Shinshinto (New Frontier Party) to tone down the text, which originally censured the two countries for conducting "impermissible acts".-Reuter