France seeks new set of sanctions on Iran

[Ellinas]

By Katrin Bennhold

MOSCOW: France sent another strong message to Iran on Monday, announcing that it would work to set up a European sanctions regime modeled on the one in place in the United States if the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on tougher measures to stop Iran's uranium enrichment program.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, en route to Moscow for his first meeting with his Russian counterpart since taking office, said a combination of "credible" sanctions and direct talks with Tehran was the best tool the West had to resolve the standoff diplomatically. On Sunday he caused some alarm by hinting at the prospect of war with Iran. He later softened his tone, but not his sense of urgency.

But Kouchner said he believed a UN resolution was unlikely. Several European countries, he said, including Britain, France and the Netherlands, were in favor of additional sanctions.

The sanctions being discussed in Paris would focus on business and financial transactions, said a senior diplomat with knowledge of the situation. Measures might include blocking certain bank accounts and inhibiting companies from bidding on Iranian contracts.

When similar sanctions were put into effect by the United States, some Iranian businesses and individuals shifted their transactions from dollars into euros. They could now be vulnerable to European sanctions.

Taking the lead on European efforts to toughen the Iranian sanctions regime is the latest illustration of President Nicolas Sarkozy's drive to put France back on the front line of global diplomacy. A month ago, Kouchner made a surprise visit to Iraq to declare that Paris could be an honest broker in the war-torn country, and in July France succeeded in winning the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor from years of imprisonment in Libya.

A hardening of France's attitude toward Iran was articulated this month when Sarkozy warned of the "catastrophic" choice between the "Iranian bomb and a bombardment of Iran" if sanctions failed.

On Sunday Kouchner said that the international community had to "prepare for the worst" and then characterized the worst as "war," a statement that made waves the diplomatic community.

On Monday Kouchner played down his comment, saying that Paris remained committed to a peaceful solution. "The worst situation would be war," he said, "and to avoid the worst, the French position is very clear: negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. And work with our European friends on credible sanctions."

The comments came as the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany prepared to meet to discuss what to do next. Russia, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, has ruled out further sanctions for the time being, a position that frustrates Kouchner.

"If there is a sufficient resolution in the Security Council we will be happy," Kouchner said. He added: "The UN is blocked and for the moment there is no prospect of a third resolution."

Sarkozy has broken with Gaullist tradition by striking a more pro-American tone and Kouchner was one of only a handful of French politicians who supported the invasion of Iraq, on humanitarian grounds. The toughening stance on Iran has been interpreted as a further alignment of the French position with Washington's.

But Kouchner rejected such a reading, arguing that France was steering a course between the "leniency" of the current sanctions regime and the view held by factions in the U.S. administration that tough sanctions should be accompanied by a policy of isolating Iran.

"You never win by not talking to people," Kouchner said on the plane to Moscow. He said he regretted that "the Americans only want to talk to Iran about Iraq" and not the nuclear program.

Kouchner said that Paris had regular contact with Tehran and that his envoy, Jean-Claude Cousseran, would travel to Iran again within a few days.

But he also warned against complacency. "We have to envisage that this enrichment does not lead to the construction of a nuclear reactor," he said. "The role of Iran is particularly worrying in the powder keg that is the Middle East."

Iran reacted angrily to Kouchner's remarks. "The new occupants of the Élysée want to copy the White House," the state run IRNA news agency wrote in an editorial Monday, referring to the French presidential palace.

The editorial added that Sarkozy's government was creating obstacles just as Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency were moving toward resolving the question of Iran's nuclear work.

The talk of war with Iran also provoked a reaction from Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna who is brokering the discussions with Iran. "I would not talk about any use of force" in the event that Iran obtains nuclear weapons, he said, The Associated Press reported. "We need to be cool. We need not to hype the issue."

He continued: "There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country had nuclear weapons."

Negotiations and two sets of UN sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program, a process that can produce fuel for nuclear power plants as well as material used in atomic weapons.

On Sunday, Kouchner also asked French energy companies not to invest in Iran. Two of those companies, Total and Gaz de France, declined Monday to comment on his request.

The companies are partners in a consortium that signed a memorandum of understanding in 2004 to build Iran's first liquefied natural gas export terminal. Work on the terminal, due to be completed in 2009, has not yet begun. Iran has valued the deal at about $12 billion.

Kouchner said Britain and the Netherlands agreed with the French proposal on new sanctions. On Monday morning, he met in Paris with the Dutch foreign minister, Frans Verhagen, who said afterward that in the absence of UN action his country would back tougher sanctions on a European Union level "in common with the United States sanctions."

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran, and Nicola Clark contributed from Paris.

International Herald Tribune