I dug up an intriguing article in 'The Australian', this morning:


FRANCE suffered a humiliating blow when President Jacques Chirac was forced to order home from the Arabian Sea the asbestos-laden former flagship of the French navy after environmentalists scuppered its planned break-up in an Indian scrapyard.


Mr Chirac ordered the recall of Le Clemenceau, a former aircraft carrier, after France's highest court ordered it to stay out of Indian waters pending legal action by environmentalists.


An Indian court had already banned the 27,000-tonne warship from entering port while deciding whether its asbestos was a hazard to shipyard workers.
The decision was a triumph for environmental pressure groups, led by Greenpeace, which mounted a vocal campaign against the practice of industrialised nations exporting waste to Southeast Asia.


Greenpeace claimed Le Clemenceau, the pride of France from the days of the late Charles deGaulle to the 1990s, was full of asbestos that would not be properly disposed of in India.


The recall has dealt a further blow to French pride at a time when the nation feels its international influence is greatly diminished. The timing could not have been worse for Mr Chirac, who casts himself as an environmental champion and is due in India on a state visit on Sunday.

Follow up:

Seeking to limit the damage, the Elysee Palace ordered a study to determine how much asbestos was left in the hulk. Environmentalists said up to 1000 tonnes remained in Le Clemenceau, while the Defence Ministry says there are only 45 tonnes.


Ministers squabbled over who was to blame for a debacle that has included the apparent disappearance of 48 tonnes of asbestos during decontamination in the French port of Toulon. It was not clear what would be the fate of a stripped-down hulk, which has become the butt of comedians and cartoonists, as it has twice wandered the seas in search of a breakers' yard. Experts expected it to be moored offshore.


The saga of hull Q790, as it is officially called, was shameful, the daily Le Monde said. "The circles in the water performed off India by the Clemenceau give a disastrous image of the French navy and France."


Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, thundered: "Those who preferred to celebrate the defeat at Trafalgar rather than Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz are responsible for this indescribable outrage."


Greenpeace and other campaigners who opposed what they saw as the illegal disposal of hazardous waste claimed victory as the hulk of the 48-year-old warship was towed back to France, which it left in December. It was uncertain whether it would be allowed through the Suez Canal, which blocked its passage for 10 days last month.


The Clemenceau's aborted voyage to the breakers' yard at Gujarat was its second since it was decommissioned in 1997 and found to be riddled with asbestos.


In 2003, France was forced to recover the Clemenceau from the eastern Mediterranean after a Spanish company breached a contract to dismantle it in Spain and towed the hulk towards a yard in Turkey.


The partial decontamination in Toulon ran into trouble, and the Defence Ministry sacked the company that was doing the work. Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie this week sued the company over the missing 48tonnes of asbestos and she came under fire for mishandling the affair.


The final straw for Paris was a finding by the judicial adviser to the Court of State, France's highest legal body. He ruled that the stripped-down hulk be considered as waste rather than a warship and was therefore subject to the 1989 Basel Convention on dangerous waste.


The court ordered the Government to pay about $23,500 in costs and damages to the four environmental groups who applied for the emergency ruling.

Ms Alliot-Marie, a protege of Mr Chirac, said the blame for the fiasco lay with Finance Minister Thierry Breton because his officials had set the financial terms for the decontamination.


Charles Bremner, Paris

February 17, 2006