Egypt on Thursday banned a French aircraft carrier from crossing the Suez Canal on its way to India on the grounds that the vessel was leaking toxic waste, a Suez Canal Authority official told Reuters. The French Defence Ministry said there was no leak coming from the ship and that the Egyptian authorities had not informed them it would be stopped from crossing the international waterway on its way to an Indian shipyard. "Egypt decided to prevent the French ship from entering the Suez Canal," an official from the Suez Canal Authority said. A panel appointed by India's Supreme Court has recommended that the vessel not be allowed to enter India because of worries about toxic waste. "Egypt decided to prevent the French aircraft carrier from nearing Egyptian regional waters because of the presence of a poisonous leak," added the Egyptian official, who did not want to be named. The official said the authority took the decision after Egypt's environmental agency said the leak from the ship could cause harm to the canal's environment and the Egyptian coastline. Environmental group Greenpeace has urged Paris and New Delhi not to allow the decommissioned Clemenceau to reach the scrapyard in the western state of Gujarat without first being 98 percent decontaminated in France. Greenpeace says the 27,000-tonne ship is fitted with hundreds of tonnes of hazardous materials, including 500 tonnes of asbestos, which could pose a severe risk to scrapyard workers. The environmental group says thousands of workers in the ship-breaking industry in Asian countries have died in the last two decades in accidents or through exposure to toxic waste. "There is no poisonous leak on the Clemenceau, I can assure you of that," said an official at the French Defence Ministry, adding that Egyptian authorities had asked for technical information that the ministry was preparing. French authorities have said the most dangerous work of removing 115 tonnes of brittle asbestos has been done in France and the remaining amount has to be kept in place to keep the ship seaworthy on its last journey to India.
