PARIS, Jan. 31 President Jacques Chirac said this week that if Iran had one or two nuclear weapons, it would not pose a big danger, and that if Iran were to launch a nuclear weapon against a country like Israel, it would lead to the immediate destruction of Tehran.
The remarks, made in an interview on Monday with The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune and Le Nouvel Observateur, a weekly magazine, were vastly different from stated French policy and what Mr. Chirac has often said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Chirac summoned the same journalists back to Élysée Palace to retract many of his remarks.
Mr. Chirac, who is 74 and months away from ending his second term as president, suffered a neurological episode in 2005 and is said by French officials to have become much less precise in conversation.
In the second interview, Mr. Chirac retracted his comment that Tehran would be destroyed if Iran launched a nuclear weapon. I retract it, of course, when I said, One is going to raze Tehran, he said.
He added that any number of third countries would stop an Iranian bomb from ever reaching its target. It is obvious that this bomb, at the moment it was launched, obviously would be destroyed immediately, Mr. Chirac said. We have the means several countries have the means to destroy a bomb.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/w...&ex=1170910800&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print
The remarks, made in an interview on Monday with The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune and Le Nouvel Observateur, a weekly magazine, were vastly different from stated French policy and what Mr. Chirac has often said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Chirac summoned the same journalists back to Élysée Palace to retract many of his remarks.
Mr. Chirac, who is 74 and months away from ending his second term as president, suffered a neurological episode in 2005 and is said by French officials to have become much less precise in conversation.
In the second interview, Mr. Chirac retracted his comment that Tehran would be destroyed if Iran launched a nuclear weapon. I retract it, of course, when I said, One is going to raze Tehran, he said.
He added that any number of third countries would stop an Iranian bomb from ever reaching its target. It is obvious that this bomb, at the moment it was launched, obviously would be destroyed immediately, Mr. Chirac said. We have the means several countries have the means to destroy a bomb.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/w...&ex=1170910800&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print
