News story: January 8, 2010

ICAN activists in Paris staged protests on Friday outside the defence department building and the Saint-Michel fountain, calling on the French government to support negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

The French ICAN collective, which comprises 57 organizations, had earlier launched an internet petition urging President Nicolas Sarkozy to promote an abolition treaty at the five-yearly review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May.

France maintains an arsenal of more than 300 nuclear weapons, the third largest in the world behind the American and Russian arsenals. Between 1960 and 1996, it conducted 210 nuclear tests in French Sahara (now Algeria) and French Polynesia. The Paris protesters wore white masks and black clothes to symbolize the victims of these tests.

In 2006 France announced that it would be prepared to use its nuclear weapons to prevent or retaliate against a terrorist attack, and committed $US4 billion towards modernizing its arsenal. President Sarkozy remains opposed to calls for a nuclear-weapon-free world.

Photos and words by Tim Wright