  We derive simple and physically transparent expressions for the contribution
of the strong interaction to one nucleon removal processes in peripheral
relativistic heavy ion collisions. The coherent contribution,i.e, the
excitation of a giant dipole resonance via meson exchange is shown to be
negligible as well as interference between coulomb and nuclear excitation.
Incoherent nucleon knock out contribution is also derived suggesting the nature
of the nuclear interaction in this class of processes. We also justify the
simple formulae used to fit the data of the E814 Collaboration.
