From French flagship to national embarrassment

Once the pride of the French Navy. Picture / Reuters

For 36 years and more than 1,800,000km travelled, the aircraft carrier Clemenceau represented France's power and pride.

Launched three months after the building of the Berlin Wall, the 24,200-tonne ship served through the Cold War and saw action in the Balkans, Lebanon and Iraq before being withdrawn from service in 1997.

Today, le Clem is a hulk, her massive engines removed and sold, her helicopters and jets long gone, her missile systems and huge cannon gutted.

Her journey toward decline is nothing short of a national humiliation. In 2003, French attempts to sell it for scrap failed because of the asbestos used in its construction.

After a costly operation to remove the asbestos, the aircraft carrier set off under tow last New Year's Eve, heading for a scrapyard in India. It would seem that the problem was, at last, off France's hands.

But what was to be le Clem's voyage into the sunset is turning out to be a cringing embarrassment.

The trip was dogged by a Greenpeace protest occupation early in its trip. Then Egypt refused to let the 265m ship enter the Suez Canal until France proved it did not break a 1989 international pact on the transport of toxic waste, the Basel Convention.

For three days, the now anonymous Hull Q790 performed useless circles just outside Egypt's waters, while Paris tussled with Cairo.

Press reports in Paris say that arm-twisting by President Jacques Chirac, in a phone call to his friend President Hosni Mubarak, tipped the balance.

France's official explanation, now accepted by Egypt, is that as Hull Q790 is registered with the French Navy and as a warship does not come under the provisions of the Basel treaty.

But its future is still unclear. Last week, India warned France to keep the carrier outside its international waters until its Supreme Court rules on whether the vessel can be accepted.

The ruling is scheduled on February 13, but the signs are ominous.

In a preliminary decision last week, a court commission gave Hull Q790 the thumbs-down.

The nightmare is that after having being towed to India, the Clemenceau will have to be pulled back home - the long way around the Cape of Good Hope, if Mubarak takes a tougher line.

France says it has removed 115 of 160 tonnes of asbestos. Green groups say that between 500 and 1000 tonnes remain with lead, mercury, PCBs and other toxic chemicals also onboard.

Environmentalists say the sprawling Alang scrapyard in Gujarat - the hulk's supposed destination - cannot handle such hazardous substances.

"The French Government is operating on the lowest-cost basis," says the national secretary of France's Green Party, Yann Wehrling. "In France, workers could remove the asbestos safely, and the ship could then be sent to India without putting Indian workers at added risk."

Politicians are piling on the pressure to cut the debacle short. Former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius has called for bringing le Clem back ahead of the court ruling and getting the remaining asbestos removed at home, at whatever price.

"It's becoming slapstick comedy," he said. "If France wants to restore its credibility in environmental matters ... it has to accept this price, which is the price of responsibility."

Marseilles city council proposed in 2003 to scuttle the Clemenceau in the Bay of Marseilles after removing the chemical pollutants, making it one of the world's biggest artificial reefs and a haven for the Mediterranean's dwindling aquatic life.

Two independent studies have shown that asbestos is harmless in the aquatic environment, claims the Ecologie Generation group, which says the idea would also give France's great warrior ship a dignified end.