French Declarations on Iranian N-Issue

Arzu Celalifer Ekinci
Saturday , 22 September 2007

The international platform has shaken with the latest French declarations on Iranian nuclear case this month. The obvious signs of a hardening French attitude toward Iran were seen after the successively statements of French President and Foreign Minister. While President Nicolas Sarkozy warned that the Iranian nuclear crisis presented the world with ‘a catastrophic alternative: Iranian bomb and a bombardment of Iran’, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that the world should prepare for war over Iran’s disputed nuclear program. “We must negotiate right to the end” with Iran, Kouchner added, but underlined that if Tehran possessed an atomic weapon, it would represent “a real danger for the whole world.” But those statements give the impression that as a member of EU/3 who is a party in the nuclear crisis negotiations, France plans to be in a hard line on dealing with Iran....