Chirac vows nuclear retaliation

PARIS – President Jacques Chirac said Thursday that France is prepared to launch a nuclear strike against any country that sponsors a terrorist attack against French interests. He said his country’s nuclear arsenal had been reconfigured to include the ability to make a tactical strike in retaliation for terrorism.

“The leaders of states who would use terrorist means against us, as well as those who would envision using … weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would lay themselves open to a firm and fitting response on our part,” Chirac said during a visit to a nuclear submarine base in Brittany. “This response could be a conventional one. It could also be of a different kind.”

The French president said his country had reduced the number of nuclear warheads on some missiles deployed on France’s four nuclear submarines in order to target specific points rather than risk wide-scale destruction.

“Against a regional power, our choice is not between inaction and destruction,” Chirac said, according to the text of his speech posted on the presidential Web site. “The flexibility and reaction of our strategic forces allow us to respond directly against the centers of power.”

At the same time, he condemned “the temptation by certain countries to obtain nuclear capabilities in contravention of treaties.”

Chirac’s comments came amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts by France, Britain, Germany and the United States to stop Iran from pursuing contested elements of its nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency has called an emergency meeting for Feb. 2 to address Iran’s recent decision to take steps toward advancing its uranium enrichment efforts.

Chirac said state-sponsored terrorism has replaced the threats of the Cold War era. “In numerous countries, radical ideas are spreading, advocating a confrontation of civilizations,” he said.

Disarmament organizations called Chirac’s threat to use nuclear weapons against states that sponsor terrorism irresponsible.

“Far from ridding France of nuclear weapons, the president is on the contrary considering the actual use of nuclear bombs,” the anti-nuclear arms group, Sortir du Nucleaire, said.

“That’s exactly the kind of message we should not be sending to the Iranians,” said Ivan Oelrich, a nuclear physicist at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists. “That nuclear weapons are a vital part of my defense and I’m going to use them in response to a terrorist attack.”