World Notes New Zealand

Even Prime Minister David Lange conceded that the tactic was "really a strange way of trying to obtain the liberty of two guilty people." Still, Lange charged last week in a letter to French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas that Paris has blocked $7 million worth of imported New Zealand lamb brains to pressure Wellington into releasing two French intelligence officers involved in the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of the international environmental organization Greenpeace. A Greenpeace photographer was killed in the incident, which occurred while the vessel was docked in Auckland harbor last July.

Evidence of the brain ban emerged early this year. A French importer complained in the Paris daily Liberation that a routine request to import the delicacy (called cervelles and served braised in France's fashionable ! restaurants) drew a protracted silence. "No one seems able to answer our requests," said the importer. Simultaneously, authorities in France's southwestern Pacific territory, New Caledonia, began rejecting other foodstuffs from New Zealand, including 500 tons of potatoes and 60 tons of beef and mutton.

France has also stopped importing New Zealand's canned kiwi fruit, and scattered reports suggest that fish, canned fruits and vegetables may be next on a growing list. So far, French officials have refused to make any comment on the embargoes.