The Hindu : Front Page : French ship must not enter India

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 07, 2006

Front Page

Front Page

French ship must not enter India

Kalpana Sharma

Officials of French firm depose before committee

MUMBAI: The Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Wastes Management on Friday decided that the French warship, Clemenceau, should not enter India. This recommendation would be sent to the court in two days.

G. Thyagarajan, chairman, said that in the light of new and additional information about the ship, the committee concluded that "it is not desirable for the ship to enter India's sovereign territory."

The Clemenceau is expected to enter Indian territorial waters in four to six weeks.

The committee, which met here, also heard two representatives from the French company, Technopure, contracted to decontaminate the ship. In a 15-minute presentation, Eric Baudon and Jean-Claude Giannino, who flew down to India at their own expense, explained the size of the Clemenceau, its structure and the fact that it had been specially built and that it had a vast amount of cabling containing asbestos. Their company had only partially decontaminated the ship and it still contained at least 500 tonnes of asbestos.

In the light of the conflicting information on the quantity of asbestos, the estimates of which varied from 15 to 500 tonnes, the committee felt that it needed more information. "People have not been transparent in the disclosure of information," Dr. Thyagarajan said. The committee would wait for two weeks before giving its final recommendation to the court.

The committee considered several issues: whether the decision to send the ship to India conformed to the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and whether the country should accept the vessel.

Dr. Thyagarajan emphasised that even if the Convention did not specifically mention ships "or aircraft or mules," any movement of hazardous waste in any kind of container constituted a violation. "If India accepts the ship, then India will be seen as abetting [in] a violation of the Basel Convention," he said. "Why should India spend Rs. 40 crore in foreign exchange to buy trouble? Why should we sacrifice our precious soil to bury some other country's junk?"

To a question on the Gujarat Pollution Control Board's position that it was capable of handling the hazardous wastes, Dr. Thyagarajan said: "If a ship comes with 1,00,000 cobras, will we accept it just because some Indians can catch cobras?"