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| India-Pakistan |
| Clemenceau stranded by Indian Supreme Court order |
| 2006-01-16 |
| NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has said it will not permit the decommissioned French aircraft carrier, Clemenceau, to dock in the country as it is carrying toxic waste. However, the apex court also modified the order after the owners said they would satisfy the court that the ship has no pollutants on board. Shipping Decommissioning Industry Corporation (SDIC), the French owners, also gave an undertaking that Clemenceau will not enter India's exclusive economic zone while the matter is sub-judice. The two-judge bench comprising justices Arijit Pasayat and S.H. Kapadia said: "We don't want the environment to be polluted. When the French government had not permitted the ship to be broken there, why should we allow the ship to come to India?" "Whether breaking the ship will result in pollution or not is immaterial. The best thing will be to ask the ship to go back from where it started," the court observed. The observation came when the bench took up for consideration the report of the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Waste that met in Mumbai earlier this month, stating that the ship should not be allowed to enter Indian waters as it contained a large quantity of asbestos. Clemenceau, heading for the Alang ship-breaking yard in Gujarat, is facing protests from environmental groups in India who say it is carrying 45 tons of hazardous asbestos. |
| Posted by:john |
| #6 I am wondering why they don't scuttle it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the night? |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet O´ Doom 2006-01-16 23:25 |
| #5 a pair of old sneakers as safety respiratory gear? What kind of heartless bastards... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-01-16 19:15 |
| #4 Maybe the Indian Navy can use her for target practice ? |
| Posted by: john 2006-01-16 18:44 |
| #3 And so ends the greatest French naval adventure since the Battle of the Rainbow Warrior, run aground on a reef of legal documents. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2006-01-16 17:48 |
| #2 the Alang ship-breaking yard in Gujarat I saw a story on the Indian shipbreaking "yards" on National Geographic once. They run the ship at full speed up on the beach at high tide and this gang of men swarm over it and take them apart piece by piece with hand tools. Only protective gear would be a pair of sneakers. |
| Posted by: Steve 2006-01-16 16:12 |
| #1 The irony of this is the ignorance of asbestos. It comes in two forms, long fiber and short fiber. The long fiber stuff is determineably deadly; it is also quite uncommon in asbestos. Most asbestos is short fiber, which with a modicum of protective equipment, is no great threat, any more than ordinary silica is for silicosis, or coal for "black lung" disease. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-01-16 15:44 |