With the last legal hurdle now out of the way, the asbestos-laden, decommissioned ship could weigh anchor for India as early as Sunday or Monday. It is to be dismantled for scrap at the Alang ship breaking yards in Gujarat by Shree Ram Scrap Vessels Pvt Limited, one of the largest ship breaking companies in India. The steel from the Clemenceau, weighing an estimated 26000 tonnes, is valued at 8 million euros.

Activists' lobbying fails

Environmental activists lobbied very hard to stop the ship, which contains anywhere between 50 and 120 tonnes of asbestos from leaving French shores. In a last ditch attempt, four associations including Ban Asbestos and Greenpeace moved the administrative court in Paris arguing that the ship itself, denuded of its armaments and locomotive power was now a mere container carrying pollutants and hazardous materials and not "war material" as claimed by the French government.

Throwing out their case, the court accepted the Government's arguments that the ship, which is just a shell, continued to be a warship until the moment of dismantling and therefore exempt from the ban on the export of hazardous materials as laid down by the Basel Convention of 1989, to which France is a signatory.

Contacted from by The Hindu from Paris, Dr. G.Thyagarajan, Chairman of the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Waste, said: "This is a very unintelligent approach. A warship is a container like any other. When it comes to the Basel Convention, it talks about toxic materials but does not specifically mention ships. We must take a pragmatic approach. Such hair-splitting leads nowhere. My position is there should be no import and no export of hazardous substances and no exceptions to that rule. We expect that countries belonging to the OECD such as France who are signatories to the Basel Convention have a moral responsibility to ensure that they do not allow anything containing hazardous materials to be sent to friendly countries."

Since its decommissioning in 1997, the Clemenceau — once the flagship of the French navy — has been mired in controversy. The ship has been turned back by Greece and Turkey who said it was unwelcome on their soil. Even now the exact amount of asbestos on board is not fully known and contradictory figures have been issued by the Government itself.

Scaled down estimate

A senior member of the French Defence Minister's staff first stated there was 220 tonnes on board of which 198 tonnes or 90 per cent would be removed in France. It now appears that only 115 tonnes have been removed out of a fresh scaled down estimate of 160 tonnes, a far cry from the 90 per cent removal initially promised as per the deposition of Shree Ram Scrap Vessels before the Indian Supreme Court's Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Waste.

According to the latest estimates given by Vice Admiral Forissier and by Mr. Briac Beilvert, CEO of the SDIC or Ship Decommissioning Industries Corporation which signed a contract with the Navy to acquire the ship, at least 40 tonnes of asbestos still remained on board. He refused to disclose the exact location of the asbestos citing confidentiality clauses.

Documents obtained by The Hindu indicate that the clean-up company Technopure first hired to carry out the decontamination had proposed two types of contracts — one for 3 million euros for a light decontamination and 6 million euros for more major work. The cheaper option was retained by SDIC.

Contacted by telephone from Paris, Dr. Claude Alvarez, a member of the Supreme Court committee told The Hindu : "If there is 40 tonnes of asbestos on board I do not think we can handle it. The committee is meeting again on January 6th and we shall seek a guarantee from the French government that the asbestos removed will be sent back to France. Without such an assurance, it would be unwise of the French government to allow the ship to leave France."

The French Navy and the private company SDIC invited Indian journalists to a special briefing at the Naval headquarters in Paris followed by a view of the ship at the military shipyards at the Toulon naval base in southern France where the Clemenceau is docked.

The briefing was an attempt to convince the Indian press that the ship was now free of all friable, accessible and visible asbestos and that the rest of the hazardous material remaining on the ship would be removed under optimum conditions of worker safety by qualified and trained Indian engineers under the direct supervision of the SDIC once the ship reached Alang.

However, serious question remain about the exact amount of asbestos, on board and whether the French could have taken out much more than they have done.