PARIS, 12 March 2003 — France applauded President Jacques Chirac yesterday after he promised in a major prime time television interview to veto a UN resolution authorizing war in Iraq.

“Chirac — No” shouted the front page of the leftist daily Liberation against a background the color of a red traffic light. “Chirac to Bush — It’s No” chimed the Le Parisien daily in its report on Monday night’s televised interview.

“Firm in his opposition to a conflict which ‘is not inevitable’ and thus ready to use his veto, but willing to avoid overly poisoning relations between Paris and Washington — that is how the president appeared” Le Parisien wrote.

Political leaders of all shades rushed to back the conservative Chirac, reflecting polls that show 80 percent of French voters oppose war and want UN inspectors to be given more time to rid Iraq of alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Francois Hollande said his opposition Socialist Party shared Chirac’s arguments against war and “approved France’s position expressed by the president of the republic, to reject the American resolution and to use...the right of veto.”

“I am proud of France and of her attitude in this painful and difficult debate,” Alain Bocquet, parliamentary floor leader of the Communist Party, told LCI television.

“The use of the veto is justified because a major national interest is at stake — France’s vision of the world’s future,” said Francois Bayrou, leader of the center-right UDF party who has often prickly relations with Chirac’s governing UMP.

Even far-right leader and Chirac archenemy Jean-Marie Le Pen, defeated in a landslide in last year’s presidential elections, approved the stance.

But he said it would have been “better for the honor of France” if Chirac had spoken before Russia had made it clear Moscow would block the resolution by the United States, Britain and Spain giving Iraq until March 17 to disarm or face war.

However some said the French policy could come with a cost.

Alain Duhamel, veteran political commentator on RTL radio, said a French veto of the latest draft resolution on Iraq would be “a form of divorce” and provoke “the most serious crisis (in Franco-US relations) since France left NATO.”

Chirac’s interview came just days after the anniversary of Charles de Gaulle’s decision in 1966 to pull France from NATO’s integrated military structure in a row over nuclear weapons.

“You just have to read what’s being written and said by the Americans about France today before the veto to imagine what it’ll be like after the veto”, Duhamel said.

American media have carried anti-French jibes such as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” or the “rat that tried to roar” as Chirac marshaled international opposition to a US-led war in Iraq.

French media have also attacked the US position.