France Ratchets Up The Pressure On Iran

More news coming from France indicates that yesterday's blunt warning about the possibility of war was not an aberration. The French Prime Minister is now issuing his own warnings - and is trying to convince the European Union to impose unilateral sanctions if the UN will not.

PARIS (AFP) - France followed up a warning that the Iran nuclear crisis could lead to war by calling on Monday for European sanctions against Tehran.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said tensions with Iran are now "extreme", heightening a diplomatic storm caused by Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner's warning on Sunday that the world should prepare for a conflict over Iran's alleged work on a nuclear weapon.

The comments infuriated Iranian leaders who accused France of stoking "tensions". International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei called the war talk "hype".

But while French leaders said they would prefer a negotiated settlement, they also launched a proposal to establish European sanctions against Iran, outside of those already implemented by the United Nations.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany are to discuss new UN sanctions on Iran, which has rejected demands to stop enriching uranium.

Kouchner met his Dutch counterpart Maxime Verhagen in Paris and said European countries should prepare their own non-UN sanctions.

"These would be European sanctions that each country, individually, must put in place with its own banking, commercial and industrial system. The English and the Germans are interested in talking about this. We will try to find a common European position," Kouchner said.

The continuation by France of the bellicose language indicates that they fully intend to push - hard - for real sanctions. The war talk is more for the benefit of other European countries than it is for Iran, I suspect. This is France's way of signaling that something had better get done about Iran before a real war becomes inevitable.