Members of Greenpeace Switzerland wearing a George W. Bush mask, right, and mock prison uniforms gather in front of the U.S. Embassy in Bern, Switzerland Monday, Aug. 13, 2001. Some 30 activists staged a demonstration titled "Stop Star Wars not Greenpeace" to protest against the U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield and demand to dismiss legal proceedings against 15 Greenpeace activists, who were demonstrating at the U.S. Air Force base in Vandenberg, southern California, in July 2001. (AP Photo/KEYSTONE, Lukas Lehmann)

As the environmental pressure group looks ahead to its 30th anniversary next month, Leipold said US president George W. Bush's "Star Wars" missile defense program had forced Greenpeace to turn full circle.

The organization was formed on September 15, 1971, when a group of campaigners left Vancouver harbor for Amchitka, off the Alaskan coast, to protest against US nuclear testing.

Almost three decades on in July 2001, activists sailed to the Vandenburg airbase in California where the US military was about to launch a missile test as part of its defense program

Fifteen campaigners and two journalists were arrested at the scene and were on Monday charged with conspiracy in a Californian court. They are due to go on trial next month.

Speaking at the launch of Greenpeace's annual report in London, Leipold said: "After the end of the Cold War the opposition to nuclear weapons was less important for a while. But we can't say that any more, with the Bush administration's modernization program

"We are reacting to a change in big politics. We are picking up where we were quite active 10 to 12 years ago."

He said Bush was putting the world at risk by a "truly astonishing policy path that could undo so much progress in environmental protection and world peace."

Leipold attacked the Bush administration's plans to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits a national missile defense and tests done from the water or from the air.

He also criticized Bush for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol on global warming earlier this year.

Looking back over the organization's history, Leipold said Greenpeace had proved it was unique in the way it sought to be a positive force for change.

With membership growing six percent on last year to 2.65 million, its voice has never been stronger, he added.

Highlights in 2001 alone include an agreement in April to save several large areas of Canada's Great Bear rainforest and the adoption in May of a convention that aims to stop the production and use of persistent organic pollutants.

Leipold said he wanted to see Greenpeace become even more international.

"I am firmly committed to making Greenpeace a more global organization

"I want to maintain Greenpeace as an action organization -- an organization that puts its actions where its heart is, that is at the scene of the crime."

Copyright © 2001 AFP

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