Paris - The head of France's nuclear reprocessing firm said yesterday Paris had a state-to-state agreement with Bonn that meant Germany would have to pay damages if it pulled out of bilateral reprocessing deals.
The president of Cogema, Mr Jean Syrota, said the agreements were published in France's Official Journal after the deals were signed and had the force of a legal contract.
"Those accords, published in the Offical Journal on August 17th, 1990, after the contracts, have the force of a contract," he said. The agreement stated that neither government would create obstacles to the fulfilment of the contracts by Cogema and the participating German utility companies.
Mr Syrota said Cogema faced losses of about 30 billion francs (£3.6 bn) over 10 years if the new Bonn government went ahead and broke the contracts to reprocess German nuclear waste at Cogema's plant.
The German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, insisted at the weekend that the contracts did not call for compensation if one side pulled out because of an unforeseen force majeure.