PARIS, 19 September 2006 — French President Jacques Chirac yesterday urged more nuclear talks with Iran during which it would not be referred to the UN Security Council — setting the scene for another possible clash with the United States, which is pushing for sanctions.
Chirac argued that more negotiations should take place with Iran, free of the threat of sanctions.
“During that negotiation, I propose that on the one hand the six refrain from referring the issue to the Security Council and that Iran renounce during the negotiation the enrichment of uranium,” he told Europe 1 radio.
The six nations holding talks with Tehran are the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany.
It was the first time a European leader has clearly stated that the suspension of uranium enrichment was not a precondition for opening talks on the nuclear dossier.
Chirac indicated that the suspension should come during rather than before negotiations.
“We can find solutions via dialogue,” said Chirac, who later headed to New York for the United Nations General Assembly due to start today. There, he was to meet US President George W. Bush, who has been espousing a harder line against Iran, America’s archenemy for the past three decades.
Both men are to address the assembly today. So will Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Bush last week warned US allies not to get caught up in talking with Tehran, which Washington suspects is trying to build a nuclear arsenal under cover of an energy production program.
“My concern is that, you know, they’ll stall; they’ll try to wait us out,” Bush said. “So part of my objective in New York is to remind people that stalling shouldn’t be allowed.”
The United States would like to see the Security Council threaten sanctions on Iran, including economic measures and travel bans. But veto-wielding members China, Russia — and now France — are openly balking.
Chirac, in an interview with CNN, said: “There is a lot more potential to dialogue and I would like us to go the to the end of that particular road before we decide to go any further in any other direction.
“I very much hope that dialogue will get us out of this crisis and I believe it will.”
The French president also touched on the UN Security Council row over the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which poisoned relations between Paris and Washington and cast Chirac and Bush more as ideological opponents than allies.
He told CNN he was convinced that his objections to the US push for war on Iraq — Iran’s neighbor — had been validated.
“I adopted a stance on Iraq and I have to say that the way things panned out, it certainly didn’t go against the stance I took. What I said has been borne out and I remain very pessimistic about Iraq and its future.”
Chirac refused to criticize Pope Benedict over recent comments that sparked worldwide Muslim anger but called for a more diplomatic use of language.
A speech by Pope Benedict last Tuesday was seen as portraying Islam as a religion tainted by violence, causing dismay among Muslims while some religious leaders called it the start of a new Christian crusade against Islam.
“It is not my role or my intention to comment on the pope’s statements. I simply want to say, on a general level... that we must avoid anything that excites tensions between peoples or between religions,” Chirac said.
“We must avoid making any link between Islam, which is a great, respected and respectable religion, and radical Islamism, which is a totally different activity and one of a political nature,” Chirac added.
The French president proposed an international conference on the reconstruction of Lebanon. “We would like to participate in the reconstruction of Lebanon, because above and beyond the political solution... there is Lebanon’s reconstruction which requires a united international community,” he said.
Chirac refused to say if he would run for a third term. He said it was too early to talk about next spring’s election and vowed his government would work until its last day in office to prolong the recent economic revival.
“I will announce my intentions in the first quarter of next year and in the meantime I refuse to get involved in any speculation, which seems to me quite useless,” the president said when asked if he would run again.
With the election already dominating political life, analysts said Chirac was seeking to stave off talk of a lame duck presidency.
“I think for now Chirac wants to push back the start of the presidential campaign as much as possible because it will by definition lead to him being eclipsed,” said Eric Mandonnet, deputy editor of the L’Express news weekly.
