NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/chile/chilel/1138

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-22 | 5.4 KB

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Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 21:51:10 CST

 PLUTONIUM SHIP WON'T PASS BY SOUTH AMERICA

The Japanese ship Akatsuki Maru, which is carrying the largest
single shipment of plutonium ever transported--45 tons--has been
rerouted from the American continent to pass by the Cape of Good
Hope in the southern tip of Africa. Greenpeace coordinator for
the South Pacific Sara Larrain said that pressure brought to bear
by the governments of Caribbean and Latin American nations
influenced Japan's decision to change the ship's course away from
Cape Horn. [Chile Information Project (CHIP) News 11/21/92,
11/25/92; IPS 11/17/92] The ship's threatened passage through
South America also sparked protests: in Santiago, Chile dozens of
students and environmental activists demonstrated on Nov. 19 in
front of the Japanese embassy [Diario Las Americas 11/21/92 from
AFP]; In Argentina, members of Greenpeace demonstrated and held a
die-in in front of the Japanese Embassy in Buenos Aires. The
activists carried in a stretcher 17,000 signatures demanding the
halting of the ship. [DLA 11/28/92 from AFP]

The Chilean government had said it opposed the passage of the
ship through Chilean waters, and the subject was broached in
conversations between Chilean President Patricio Aylwin and
Japanese Prime Minister Kiishi Miyazawa during Aylwin's recent
visit to Japan. Chilean Foreign Relations Minister Enrique Silva
Cimma has pointed out that while the Akatsuki Maru has now been
rerouted, the ship is scheduled to make at least 45 more such
trips; he said the controversy highlights the need for
strengthening international law on the transport and handling of
high-risk cargoes. [CHIP News 11/21/92, 11/25/92; IPS 11/17/92]

 CHILE: CARDOEN, THATCHER AND THE MURDERED JOURNALIST

A Chilean court has reopened the case of British journalist
Jonathan Moyle, who was found hanged in a Santiago hotel room on
March 31, 1990. (See Update #85) The editor of Defence Helicopter
World, Moyle was apparently in Chile to investigate plans by arms
manufacturer Carlos Cardoen--who is closely connected to the
Chilean military--to develop helicopter and missile systems based
on British and US designs. The British embassy in Chile promoted
a story that Moyle had accidentally hanged himself while
masturbating, but subsequent investigation revealed that he had
been injected in the heel with a lethal substance. The court has
ordered Cardoen's former public relations officer Raoul
Montesinos to appear in court for an identity parade on Dec. 10.
[The Guardian (UK) 11/23/92; The Independent (UK) 11/28/92]

United Kingdom has been rocked over the last month with
revelations of British involvement in arms sales to Iraq during
the middle 1980s, some through Cardoen Industries. Cardoen says
that he gave both the British and the US Defense Department
"ample explanation" of his Iraqi arms sales and that officials
had "verified the entire manufacturing process of the arms in
question." Cardoen denies any link to Moyle's death and says his
firm did a "relatively small amount of business" with Iraq "in
the face of the huge arms sales carried out by the United States
and the United Kingdom." His company built an arms factory
outside Baghdad in 1987 and made about $80 million a year selling
cluster bombs to Iraq. [Independent 11/26/92] Mark Thatcher, son
of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has been described as
an associate of Cardoen by former Israeli intelligence officer
Ari Ben-Menashe. [Independent 11/28/92] (Another Thatcher
associate at the time was H. Ross Perot, whose firm, Electronic
Data Systems (EDS), paid Thatcher as a consultant while it was
discussing $500 million in defense contracts with the British
government.) [The Observer (UK) 11/22/87]

 VENEZUELA: LEFTIST ELECTED MAYOR OF CARACAS

A little more than one week after a military coup failed to
overthrow Venezuela's social democratic President Carlos Andres
Perez, Perez's Democratic Action party lost heavily in Dec. 6
state and local elections. With an abstention rate of about 50%,
voters turned Democratic Action out of several longtime
strongholds, leaving the opposition COPEI party with 11 of 22
states. And in a sweeping rejection of the ruling party's neo-
liberal economic policies, Caracas voters elected Aristobulo
Isturiz of Causa R (Causa Radical, a small leftist party created
by the steelworkers union) to replace Democratic Action Mayor
Claudio Fermin. [NYT 12/7/92; NYT 12/8/92 from Reuters]
After winning by 35.9% to 32.4% (12 other candidates shared the
remaining votes), Isturiz charged "electoral crime" on the part
of the governing party, "which, despite stealing votes from me,
couldn't beat me." (AP correspondents witnessed election
irregularities in the Catia neighborhood.) Isturiz had threatened
peaceful mass mobilizations if he wasn't declared the winner.
[ED-LP 12/8/92 from AP]
12/7/92]