UPDATE - Mont Blanc tunnel reopens to trucks amid protests
Date: 26-Jun-02
Country: FRANCE
Author: Virginie Ruchon
The 11.6 km (seven mile) tunnel beneath western Europe's highest mountain has reopened in stages, to cars in March and lighter trucks in May, a process marked by wrangling between France and Italy and loudly opposed by environmental groups.
During the night, a small group of protesters prevented the first heavy freight truck trying to use the tunnel from entering it, and angrily set fire to its contents when they found that it was Belgian and had a television crew but little freight aboard.
It was a Belgian lorry that caused the blaze in March 1999 that killed 39 people in the tunnel and forced its closure.
Some 2,000 people later marched from the ski resort Chamonix to block the French tunnel entrance in protest at the return of heavy freight traffic, which they say is dangerous and pollutes the beautiful and delicate Alpine region.
A tunnel cleaning worker hit a cyclist and two or three protesters with his car while driving down from the tunnel site, police said. They questioned the driver and said the protesters and cyclist were only slight hurt.
In a separate incident, about 2,500 people demonstrated on a motorway near the Frejus tunnel, used by traffic diverted from the Mont Blanc link during its closure, to show their support for the re-opening of Mont Blanc to heavy trucks.
Italy, which trucks 60 percent of its exports through Alpine tunnels, wrangled with France for months about the reopening of the Mont Blanc tunnel, accusing Paris at one point of delaying its use by heavy trucks until French elections were over.
The Franco-Italian tunnel operator GEIE said freight traffic through the link was thin yesterday, as Italian authorities had decided to stop trucks entering the tunnel in order to avoid any security problems resulting from the protest at the French end.
On the French side, there was no queue of trucks waiting to use the tunnel.
Trucks with up to four axles and weighing less than 19 tonnes were able to use the tunnel in May, and trucks of any size can now use it - except those carrying hazardous cargo which are still banned.
PROTESTERS ANGERED BY BELGIAN TRUCK
The clutch of protesters overnight emptied the Belgian truck's load of wooden pallets and set them alight, and also managed to haul a steel block weighing 21 tonnes out of the vehicle, Belgian journalist Chantal Lemaire said.
"I take total responsibility for what happened. I wanted to do a report on road transport and those who oppose it," Lemaire said. "I thought we would be one among many trucks. I never imagined we would become the focus of such emotion."
The protesters, greatly outnumbered by journalists, dispersed at around 2 a.m. (0000 GMT) after letting air out of one of the truck's tyres. A total of five heavy freight trucks managed to pass through the tunnel overnight, the tunnel operator GEIE said.
"We are stunned. That it should have been Belgian television that organised this (the truck) is degrading," said Georges Unia, president of the Association for the Respect of the Mont Blanc Area.
"Luckily the police were there, otherwise it would have been the truck that we set fire to."
In a related incident, protesters in the Vosges mountains between Germany and France blocked trucks trying to use the Bonhomme pass for three hours in sympathy with the Chamonix protest and to show their anger at what they say is increased freight traffic in the area.