France:French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said yesterday that his country had to prepare for the possibility of war against Iran over its nuclear programme, but he did not believe that any such action was imminent.
Speaking in an interview on RTL radio and LCI television, Mr Kouchner said that the world's biggest powers should use further sanctions to show they were serious about stopping Tehran getting atom bombs before it came to war.
"We must prepare for the worst," Mr Kouchner said, adding: "The worst, sir, is war."
Asked if France was involved in any planning towards war, he said: "The French army is not at the moment associated with anything at all, nor with any manoeuvre at all."
Mr Kouchner's comments follow a similarly hawkish statement by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who said last month in his first major foreign policy speech since taking office that a diplomatic push by the world's powers was the only alternative to "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran".
France has said repeatedly that it wants the UN Security Council to pass tougher sanctions against Iran over its failure to dispel fears that it is secretly pursuing nuclear weapons.
- (Reuters)