French President Emmanuel Macron avoided apologizing to French Polynesia for the devastating impact of the nuclear tests that his country had previously conducted there from 1966 to 1996, saying only that France "owes" to French Polynesia because of the nuclear tests.
On the last day of his first official trip to French Polynesia, located in the Pacific Ocean, Macron said in a speech to officials in the capital Papeete, "I take responsibility and want truth and transparency with you," stressing that the victims of these nuclear tests "must receive greater compensation."
During his first visit to the archipelago, which lasted 4 days, Macron added that "the nation is indebted to French Polynesia. This debt is caused by the fact that it hosted these experiments, especially between 1966 and 1974, which we cannot say were clean."
But Macron did not apologize in his speech for those experiments, which was demanded by the associations of radiation victims.
The residents of this archipelago of more than 100 islands between Mexico and Australia had also hoped that Macron would apologize for the nuclear tests and confirm compensation for the victims, but he spoke about compensation and avoided an apology.
Regarding compensation, Macron noted that when he was elected in 2017, "11 files were finalized, and now 187 files have been completed."
He considered this "great progress, but not enough" and announced "an extension of the deadline for submitting files" to the beneficiaries.
It is noteworthy that after 17 nuclear tests in the Sahara Desert, in 1966 France transferred its shooting range to French Polynesia, where during 30 years it conducted 193 nuclear tests, initially by air and then underground.
The last test was conducted on January 27, 1996, after the decision of former French President Jacques Chirac to resume the experiments, despite the decision to stop it, which was taken 3 years ago by his predecessor, François Mitterrand.