In blunt speech, Sarkozy talks of attack on Iran

PARIS -- In his first major foreign policy speech as president, Nicolas Sarkozy of France said yesterday that Iran could be attacked militarily if it did not live up to its international obligations to curb its nuclear program.

Speaking to France's ambassadorial corps, Sarkozy stressed that such an outcome would be a disaster. He did not say France would participate in military action against Iran or even tacitly support such an approach.

But the mere fact that he raised the specter of the use of force is expected to be perceived by Iran as a warning of the consequences if it continues its course of action and by the Bush administration as acceptance of its stance that no option, including the use of force, can be excluded.

Sarkozy praised the current diplomatic initiative by the world's powers, a two-pronged approach that threatens tougher UN-mandated sanctions if Iran does not stop enriching uranium for possible use in a nuclear weapon, but holds out the possibility of incentives if Iran complies.

This approach, he said, "is the only one that can enable us to avoid being faced with an alternative that I call catastrophic: an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."

Calling the crisis over Iran's nuclear program "the most serious weighing on the international order today," Sarkozy reiterated his position that a nuclear-armed Iran was "unacceptable" for France.

Although Sarkozy's aides said French policy had not changed, some foreign policy analysts were stunned by his blunt remarks.

"This came out of the blue," said Francois Heisbourg, author of a coming book on Iran's nuclear bid. "To actually say that if diplomacy fails the choice will be to accept a nuclear Iran or bomb Iran, this is a diplomatic blockbuster."

The president's speech, an annual ritual outlining France's foreign policy goals, came as a new poll indicated that he had extraordinarily high approval ratings more than three months into his term.

According to a TNS-Sofres telephone poll of 1,000 people published yesterday in Le Figaro, 71 percent say they are satisfied with Sarkozy's performance. A number of other polls put his approval rating higher than 60 percent.

But his debut before his ambassadors was marred by a diplomatic imbroglio involving his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who was forced to apologize to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq for calling for his resignation.

Maliki had demanded the apology from Kouchner, who was quoted on Newsweek magazine's website as saying that the Iraqi government was "not functioning" and that he told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by phone, "He's got to be replaced."

Sarkozy made no mention of the diplomatic gaffe. Instead, he went out of his way to repeatedly praise Kouchner, an outspoken humanitarian activist and former UN administrator of Kosovo who left the Socialist Party to join Sarkozy's conservative government.

In a subsequent speech to the 180 visiting ambassadors, Kouchner veered from his prepared remarks to say he had apologized to Maliki yesterday morning.

But Kouchner has a reputation for being unable to hide his feelings. He also suggested in the same sentence that the beleaguered Iraqi leader was already on his way out, saying that he "may be leaving us soon." The audience, made up of ambassadors and other invited guests, laughed.

Most of Sarkozy's speech was devoted to plotting a new, activist course for France's role in the world, particularly in preventing what he called a confrontation between Islam and the West by working to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and crises in Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq.

Praising his predecessor, he reiterated, "France was -- thanks to Jacques Chirac -- is and remains hostile" to the US-led war in Iraq. "History proved France right," he added.

Calling for a concrete deadline for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, he described it as "a nation that is falling apart in a merciless civil war," where the Sunni-Shi'ite divide could ignite conflict throughout the Middle East and where terrorists are setting up permanent bases.