French Sahara bomb veterans seek compensation

IN ECKER, Algeria, Feb 20 (Reuters) Geiger counters beep in warning as nuclear test veterans revisiting France's Saharan Ground Zero walk towards a granite mountain scarred with cracks.

The broken tower of rock in the middle of the world's biggest desert stands testament to the harm done to people and nature by France's post World War Two quest for a nuclear ''force de frappe'' or strike force, the veterans say.

Some of the underground blasts that tore fissures in Taourirt Tan Afella in southern Algeria in the 1960s also caused illnesses among local people, Algerian and French army veterans said during a rare visit to the test site on Friday.

''I was there when the nuclear bomb exploded. ... We felt like it was an earthquake,'' Ezzahi Salah, a 66-year-old elder of the nomadic Touareg people who have wandered the Sahara's moonscape of monoliths, dunes and gullies for generations.

Salah worked for French military authorities at the time and says illnesses befell local people in the subsequent years.

''The explosion hit the environment, the animals and the humans.

There are diseases that are hitting our kids,'' he said during the visit organised by Algerian authorities in a region that is usually a closed military zone.

''I call on the French government to recognise what it has done, and to give us our rights.'' Veterans of the test say France must acknowledge harm was caused by the blasts set off in shafts below the mountain at the In Ecker site and should now pay compensation.

Algerian officials echo local residents' allegations that the tests caused illnesses that had never been documented.

Mansouri Amar, an Algerian nuclear researcher, told Reuters: ''Thousands of hectares have been contaminated, and the region is still dangerous for humans and the animals.'' ''Our goal today is to show our invitees what happened here, and we should also mobilise public opinion on this issue.'' DEADLY ADORNMENT France carried out 17 nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966, at Reggane and at In Ecker, some of them under an agreement with the first Algerian government following independence in 1962.

Desert nomads for years have told how they dug up metal around Taourirt Tan Afella and fashioned it into ornaments, not realising the deadly adornment could cost them their health.

France denies any wrongdoing during its Saharan tests. It points to a report by International Atomic Energy Agency specialists who toured the sites in 1999 and found that none of the sites was likely to expose people to levels in excess of international safety norms.

It noted the two most contaminated sites, one at Reggane and one at a point on Taourirt Tan Afella's northern flanks, were barred to the public and there was likely no ''dose impact'' on nomadic herders who occasionally wandered in.

But campaigners want to know more about an accident that took place during a test at Taourirt Tan Afella on May 1, 1962, in which radioactive lava and particles spewed out of the peak.

France acknowledges several military personnel were exposed to elevated levels of radiation in the accident, the most serious of four recorded in the 1960-66 tests, but says contamination levels on local populations were insignificant.

ALGERIAN-FRENCH TENSIONS Algerian commentators say the issue may add to a long list of differences that have slowed efforts to improve uneasy relations between France and its former colony.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has called on Paris to officially apologise for massacres of Algerians during France's colonial rule, which he has branded ''genocidal'', while Paris has instead called for ''mutual respect''.

With a presidential vote less than three months away, colonialism touches on key election themes in France, such as immigration policy and security in the country's poor suburbs, where millions of people of immigrant origin live.

Compensation efforts related to the nuclear tests were stepped up last year after a report by Florent de Vathaire, a researcher at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research found there was ''a statistically significant relation'' between French tests in the Pacific and the incidence of thyroid cancer in that region.

French media have reported Vathaire as saying he would like to study classified military documents on the tests to learn more about the nature of any health dangers that resulted.

His research has encouraged efforts by veterans in Algeria to seek more information from Paris about the Sahara tests.

''Years after the French left this site, there was no security here at all,'' said veteran Michel Verger of France's Association for Veterans of Nuclear Tests, a body formed in France in 2001 to press for compensation for ailing veterans.

''Animals and nomads used to enter here, humans used some of the material left here for business purposes, without knowing it was full of radioactivity,'' said Verger, speaking at In Ekcer.

''My goal is to alert opinion and face the perpetrators with their responsibilities.'' Reuters SY DB0924