Total/Fr press

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Le Monde's Bangkok-based French journalist Jean-Claude Pomonti
(Wednesday May 7,1997) contributes another detailed story on the Yadana
pipeline and the Karen crisis ('Les Karens font les frais du
rapprochement entre Bangkok et Raugoun). written in his usual style,
passing very brief reference to TOTAL (a virtual taboo subject as
regards responsiblity and the on-going contoversy & boycott), and takes
the standard TOTAL policy line for the media, deflecting responsiblity
for any of the current problems surrounding the pipeline to its partner
Slorc, and Thailand. The story describes the KNU as " weakened and
isolated ", and having called off their threat of sabatoge of the
pipeline, and " ready to take up again negotiations with Rangoon ". The
story is Pomonti 's standard straight Slorc propaganda. 

And as far as the LA lawsuit over Unocal's drug links and
money-laundering, TOTAL is keeping low and staying out of it,for now.

Teh Le Monde story opens with the following statement:

" Neither humanitarian nor ecological preoccupations, nor economic
sanctions like the embargo on new american investments in Burma declared
late April, are going to reverse the position of Bangkok or Rangoon on a
project well-advanced: a pipeline of 650 kilometers linking the Yanada
offshore gas fields in the Gulf of Martaban, to an electricity plant
located at Ratchaburi, on the Gulf of Thailand. "

Dawn Star, Paris 
Euro-Burmanet