Chirac backtracks after saying nuclear Iran no danger

JACQUES Chirac, the French president, has said it would not be very dangerous for Iran to have a nuclear bomb - only to retract the remark 24 hours later.

Mr Chirac spoke to reporters from the New York Times, International Herald Tribune and Le Nouvel Observateur earlier this week.

Talking about Iran's nuclear ambitions, he was quoted as saying: "I would say that what is dangerous about this situation is not the fact of having a nuclear bomb - having one, maybe a second one a little later, well, that's not very dangerous.

"Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 metres into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed."

His remarks were counter to the official French position and at odds with that of the United States, Britain, Germany, Russia and China, which are pressuring Tehran to abandon sensitive nuclear technology that could be used to make atom bombs.

A day later, Mr Chirac called the trio of reporters back to his office to say he thought he had been speaking off the record and to withdraw many of his remarks.

He told them: "I retract it, of course, when I said, 'One is going to raze Tehran'," the New York Times and Herald Tribune reported.

The French president also retracted a prediction that a nuclear Iran could encourage Arab states to build a bomb.

"I retract it, of course, since neither Saudi Arabia nor Egypt has made the slightest declaration on these subjects, so it is not up to me to make them," he said.

The Herald Tribune quoted him as saying: "It is I who was wrong and I do not want to contest it...I should have paid better attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on the record."

The two US newspapers said Mr Chirac, 74, had appeared distracted at times and struggled to remember names and dates in the first interview, but seemed more alert the next day.