FRANCE: France's president says the UN Security Council should not be used, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris.
President Jacques Chirac yesterday appeared to accept a key Iranian demand for resolving the crisis over its nuclear programme, suggesting that the issue be taken away from the purview of the UN Security Council.
Mr Chirac last week received Hashemi Samareh, a special envoy from the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at the Élysée Palace. He made the suggestion in an interview hours before his departure for the UN General Assembly in New York.
"I think that Iran is a great nation, an ancient civilisation, and that we can find solutions through dialogue," Mr Chirac told Europe 1 radio station.
Iran, the five members of the Security Council plus Germany must establish a schedule for negotiation, the French leader said. "And during this negotiation, I suggest that on the one hand the six refrain from referring the matter to the Security Council, and that Iran refrain from enriching uranium for the duration of the negotiation."
Washington demands that Iran halts enrichment as a pre-condition to negotiations, and has pressed for UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic. "I am never in favour of sanctions," Mr Chirac said. "They never seem to be very efficient." Mr Chirac was to dine with the UN secretary general Kofi Annan last night and is scheduled to meet President George W Bush for a one-on-one meeting at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York today.
In a speech before the General Assembly today, expected to be the last major foreign policy address of his presidency, Mr Chirac will plead for peace and security founded on international law and collective action, funds for international development, the creation of an international agency for the environment and the deployment of a 20,000-strong UN force to the Darfur region of Sudan.
Mr Chirac yesterday appealed for an international conference to aid in the reconstruction of Lebanon. And he promised to push for an international peace conference to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In Lebanon, "The first goal is to strengthen the authority of the Lebanese government over all of its territory" as specified in Security Council resolutions 1559 and 1701, Mr Chirac said. He waited to commit French troops to Unifil until he obtained "new modalities enabling the new Unifil to protect itself and act efficiently," he explained.
Mr Chirac did not reply directly when asked whether Hizbullah could be prevented from rearming. "It is normal for there to be a current that expresses itself politically, that is to say the Hizbullah party, in Lebanese public opinion," he said.
"What is not acceptable is to express it by force, through armed militias." The French president did not openly criticise his interior minister and would-be successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, but he alluded to Mr Sarkozy's trip to Washington last week, saying that France's relationship with the US "can only be between equals . . . not a relationship of submission." Mr Chirac repeated the word "submission" three times.
In private, the President has called Mr Sarkozy's denunciation of French "arrogance" and alignment with US policies "irresponsible, dangerous, pathetic and erroneous", Libération newspaper reported.
While in the US, Mr Sarkozy criticised Mr Chirac for having threatened to veto a UN Security Council resolution that might have granted international legitimacy to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. "I assumed my responsibilities," Mr Chirac said. "And when I see the situation, the results, I don't feel I made a mistake . . . The right of veto was implied and had to be expressed."
Also yesterday, Mr Chirac told CNN: "I remain very pessimistic about . . . the future of Iraq." On domestic issues too, Mr Chirac gave the impression of putting Mr Sarkozy in his place. He refused to rule out the possibility of standing for a third term, said his government would not change the special retirement status of transport workers, as advocated by Mr Sarkozy, and opposed abandoning the "school map" which determines where French children study, another of Mr Sarkozy's demands.
Asked about the controversy over Pope Benedict XVI's quotation of a 14th century Byzantine emperor who criticised Islam, Mr Chirac said: "In the framework of the dialogue between cultures and civilisations which I advocate, we must avoid anything that heightens tensions between peoples or between religions. In particular we must avoid any confusion between Islam, which is a great, respected and respectable religion, and radical Islamicism."