Payout for French nuclear victims

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The French parliament has passed a law to compensate victims of nuclear tests in the South Pacific and Algeria, a response to decades of complaints by people sickened by radiation.

The law cleared the French Senate on Tuesday, its final legislative hurdle following approval in the National Assembly in June. France ''can at last close a chapter of its history'', the Defence Minister, Herve Morin, said.

He called the law ''just, rigorous and balanced''. However, some victims' groups in the South Pacific said the law did not go far enough.

Radio New Zealand reported that there were protest marches across several islands in French Polynesia this week. Churches and political parties said the law was inadequate as it was too restrictive.

The text, hammered out with help from some victims' associations, recognises the rights for victims of France's more than 200 nuclear tests to receive compensation.

About 150,000 people were on site for the 210 tests France carried out, both in the atmosphere and underground, in the Sahara Desert and the South Pacific from 1960 to 1996.

Compensation will be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Victims are to submit a claim to a committee made up of seven representatives of the state and two members from outside the government, which will make a recommendation to the Defence Ministry. The ministry will then notify victims of its decision.

Mr Morin has said that anyone with health problems who lived near the test sites would be eligible to seek payouts under the bill, including Algerians, whose country won independence from France in 1962, after the nuclear test program had started.

Mr Morin said it was time for France ''to be at peace with itself''.

- AP