From: MV Solo

Date: SUN 5-MAR-95 1900 GMT -- Day 11

IN BETWEEN AFRICA AND SOUTH AMERICA

The position of the Pacific Pintail at 1900 GMT was 6 degrees and 11 minutes North and 30 degrees West. The Pacific Pintail is still steering a compass course of 180 degrees South at a speed of 13.5 knots. The Pacific Pintail is almost exactly between the African and South American continents on a distance of 730 miles northeast of the Brazilian city Natal, and 860 miles southwest of the West African country Guine-Bissau.

Over the past few days the Pacific Pintail with its nuclear waste cargo has sailed passed, Cape Verde, Senegal, Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. That the French, British or even the Japanese governments haven't even informed countries of the route this shipment is taking is an indication of their greatest fear: That countries along possible shipping routes will use their sovereign rights to prohibit the ship from sailing through the waters under their jurisdiction.

African countries recently negotiated a regional agreement to remain free of nuclear weapons. Instead of threatening the shores and fisheries of African States with Japanese radioactive waste, industrialized countries should offer to develop, with African countries, programs to sustain African energy demand with energy from renewable sources like solar and wind energy.

Stay tuned for more information about the route the Pacific Pintail will take on it's hazardous journey. With the Non-Proliferation Treaty Extension Conference in April (NPT), Greenpeace is calling on countries along the route to send a clear message to the governments of France and Japan to end the production of plutonium for their 'energy programs'.

The use of civil plutonium is increasingly becoming a proliferation migraine for national security analysts and national defense policy makers of all countries. Civil plutonium can, without much difficulty, replace plutonium produced by military production programs as the primary component of a nuclear weapon. Preliminary talks have started at the Geneva Conference on Disarmament to ban all production of military plutonium. Pressure exerted by France and the United Kingdom has prevented thus far a civil plutonium production ban to be negotiated at the same time.

That's it for today. For more information, contact;