Paris-Sana
Two French bodies concerned with the abolition of nuclear weapons have called on President Emmanuel Macron to assume his responsibilities regarding French nuclear tests and radioactive contamination in Algeria.
"It is shocking that the nuclear explosions that took place more than 50 years ago in sub-Saharan Africa still have humanitarian and environmental consequences and pose risks to younger generations," the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN France and the Observatory for Armaments said in a joint statement carried by the Algerian newspaper An-Nahar.
The two bodies urgently called on Macron to facilitate the filing of compensation claims by the Algerians, access to the medical archive maintained by the Hospital Medical Archive Service of the French Ministry of Armies, and to open the file of the nuclear tests that France conducted in Algeria during the colonial period and continued after independence under the Evian Agreements.
The two bodies demanded to provide Algeria with the complete list of the places where waste was buried with their exact location and description of the buried equipment, in addition to publishing data on radioactive contaminated areas and studying ways to purify those areas in cooperation with the Algerian authorities.
The two bodies stressed the need to provide Algeria with the plans of the facilities that were used in the tests, and to expand the path of declassification of the archives of nuclear tests in Polynesia to include the period of Algeria's occupation to allow NGOs and researchers to know the full history of these tests.
Today, Macron is visiting Algeria in an attempt to restore relations between the two countries to a normal level after the mistakes he and his government made against them.
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