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PARIS - France has become the first country in the world to open to the public its official archives on unidentified flying objects.
Flying Saucer fanatics now have access to some 400 files (around a quarter of the 1600 cases of UFO sightings reported in France since the 1950s), which have been published on a website by the CNES (National Centre for Space Studies).
The centre is confident that between now and the end of the year the remaining 1200 cases will be made available to view online.
The documents now online are chiefly the declarations and testimonies of the witnesses of UFO sightings, but photographs and videos will be gradually introduced during the course of the year.
The problem facing students of UFOs may be the vague and sometimes bizarre descriptions used in many of the witness statements.
The reported sighting of an object shaped "like a flying toilet roll", for example, gives little in the way of precise or scientific detail.
Jacques Patenet, head of GEIPAN (Research Group for the Study of Unidentified Space Phenomena) said "everything will appear online, as long as people's private lives are protected."
"But UFO experts will find no scoops or undiscovered cases on this database," he added.
Visitors to the website can search the archives by region, date, or by looking for key words.
The sighting reports can also be viewed by category: A (identified conclusively as not a UFO), B (probable explanation but no formal evidence), C (insufficient evidence) or D (unidentifiable despite solid witness statements and concrete evidence).
The spokesman for CNES, Pierre Trefouret emphasised that the centre does not wish to be involved in debates about the existence of extra-terrestrial life forms.
"Our only role is to provide the general public and the scientific community with data," he said.
The archives can be viewed online at www.cnes-geipan.fr, but the online server was yesterday jammed with an overwhelming number of visitors.
- INDEPENDENT
