Everything must be done to avoid the prospect of war with Iran, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said yesterday, a day after his foreign minister said Paris should prepare for that possibility.
The US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China have backed two rounds of UN sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment and other sensitive work that could potentially be used to make nuclear weapons.
Washington is leading a drive in the Security Council for a third sanctions resolution to punish Iran over enrichment.
France, which strongly opposed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, has taken the lead since Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president in calling for further sanctions on Iran and warning of possible military action.
Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner ratcheted pressure on Tehran on Sunday, saying France had to prepare for the prospect of war with Iran, though that was not an immediate danger.
“Everything must be done to avoid war,” Fillon told reporters on a visit to the town of Angouleme in western France.
“France’s role is to lead towards a peaceful solution of a situation that would be extremely dangerous for the rest of the world,” he said. He added that Kouchner was right to say the situation was dangerous and should be taken seriously.
Kouchner said in an interview on LCI television and RTL radio on Sunday: “We must prepare for the worst,” adding: “The worst, sir, is war.”
Iran denies it is secretly seeking nuclear weapons, saying it only wants to generate electricity. But it has ignored UN demands to suspend enrichment, and Washington has called a Sept. 21 meeting for major powers to discuss further sanctions.
A senior Iranian official accused Kouchner of stirring up a crisis with Iran.
“Using crisis-making words is against France’s high historical and cultural position and is against France’s civilisation,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency.
Sarkozy raised the prospect of war last month, saying that a diplomatic push by the world’s major powers was the only alternative to “the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran”, which he said would be “catastrophic”.
France has also said the European Union should consider imposing its own sanctions against Tehran, outside the UN framework, and Kouchner said Paris had asked companies including oil giant Total not to bid in Iranian tenders.
In Tehran, the head of the Iranian parliament’s foreign policy and security committee said the position Sarkozy and his government was “hasty and imbalanced” and could damage economic ties. Alaeddin Boroujerdi also demanded an apology from France.
“Parliament will take stronger actions if the French government continues its illogical positions towards the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said, adding that, faced with such a stance, “there is no reason to have billions of euros of economic ties with France.”
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), appealed for calm.
“We need to be cool and not hype the Iranian issue,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna.
US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, asked by reporters at the Vienna meeting whether Kouchner coordinated his comments with Washington, said: “Nothing is on or off the table. (But we) remain determined to use diplomacy to resolve this matter.”
German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said Berlin refused to even think of war as a possibility, adding that the German government was strongly engaged in diplomacy.
“All other options are not up for discussion,” he said, without referring to Kouchner by name.
Germany has said further sanctions may not be necessary if Iran helps clear up all outstanding questions about its nuclear programme under an Aug. 21 agreement with the IAEA.
France has dismissed the deal as insufficient because it does not address the issue of suspension, but Fillon said war would be a last resort.
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