Islands shun radioactive hot potato.

• Author: Steif, William
• Position: Caribbean Community and Common Market opposes radioactive waste ship in area

St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

A British vessel carrying the first sea shipment of French-processed radioactive waste from Cherbourg to Japan is scheduled to pass through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal sometime in February, and the people who live along its path are scared.

The twelve-nation English-speaking group known as Caricom opposes the shipment. Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur, Caricom's chairman, wants the whole region declared a nuclear-free zone. Former secretary-general of the British Commonwealth Sir Shirdath (Sonny) Ramphal is also supporting the drive against the freighter.

Just before Christmas, Greenpeace dispatched its ship, The Rainbow Warrior, from Seville, Spain, to Port of Spain, Trinidad, for the start of a series of protest rallies on Caribbean islands and along Central America's Caribbean coast.

The small-island governments of the Caribbean have offered warm welcomes to the Greenpeace ship, which has been traveling from Trinidad toward Barbados, Martinique, Dominica, St. Eustatius, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, and Curagao.

The St. Thomas branch of the League of Women Voters is organizing a "flotilla" to greet The Rainbow Warrior. "Everybody ought to be alerted to the danger--I think it's outrageous," says Edith Bornn, an attorney in St. Thomas and a former president of the League of Women Voters.

There is plenty of reason to be concerned about safety, according to Princeton University physicist Edwin Lyman, who recently released a study raising doubts about international standards...