French President Mr Jacques Chirac criticised US President Mr George W. Bush today for his strong support of Turkey's bid to enter the European Union.
Mr Chirac told US President George W. Bush to mind his own business on Monday after Bush called on the European Union to fix a date for Turkey to start EU entry talks.
The strongly worded attack came at a NATO summit in Istanbul that was intended to bury discord within the alliance over the US-led war in Iraq, which France vehemently opposed.
"If President Bush really said that the way I read it, well, not only did he go too far but he went into a domain which is not his own," Mr Chirac told reporters at the summit.
"It is like me trying to tell the United States how it should manage its relations with Mexico," he added.
Meeting Turkish leaders ahead of the NATO summit, Mr Bush hailed Turkey as the alliance's only Muslim member and said it should be rewarded with a firm start date for talks to join the European Union, a bloc it has been courting for decades.
The White House refused to back down after Mr Chirac's remarks, pointing out that US policy on Turkey's possible accession to the EU was "well known and long standing."
"We've made our views well known in public concerning the EU and Turkey," said a White House official.
EU leaders are not due to decide on whether to open accession talks with Ankara until the end of the year after assessing its progress in human rights and other fields.
Even if the 25-member bloc decides to start talks, France and other EU states have warned that negotiations are likely to be complicated and go on for years.
Mr Chirac reaffirmed his recent remarks that he backed the principle of Turkey joining the EU when it fulfilled entry criteria, adding that Turkey had a "historic European vocation".
French and US officials have been at pains to heal ties that were badly strained over the Iraq war, but major points of difference remain, with Paris notably reluctant to accept any significant role for NATO in Iraq.