Posted on 08/27/2007 8:22:03 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
France's Sarkozy raises prospect of Iran airstrikes Mon Aug 27, 2007 10:25AM EDT
By Francois Murphy
PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday a diplomatic push by the world's powers to rein in Tehran's nuclear program was the only alternative to "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran".
In his first major foreign policy speech, Sarkozy emphasized his existing foreign policy priorities, such as opposing Turkish membership of the European Union and pushing for a new Mediterranean Union that he hopes will include Ankara.
He also presented some new ideas, such as possibly renewing high-level dialogue with Syria and expanding the Group of Eight industrialized nations to include the biggest developing states.
Sarkozy said a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable and that major powers should continue their policy of incrementally increasing sanctions against Tehran while being open to talks if Iran suspended nuclear activities.
"This initiative is the only one that can enable us to escape an alternative that I say is catastrophic: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran," he said, adding that it was the worst crisis currently facing the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
If Sarkozy keeps going like this he might give the French a good name.
Mediterranean Union. There’s an idea!
What’s in a name? Those which we call French by any other name would still smell.
He’s got a long way to go...
“If Sarkozy keeps going like this he might give the French a good name.”
When (not if) it goes down in Iran, it’d be great if France, Britain, Australia, Poland and our other actual allies join the fray. If not, though, we’ll go it alone and be just fine.
Holy Crap! France is... France is...
...making a hell of a lot more sense than d@mn near anybody I’ve heard in a long time.
It’s as if hell has frozen over. France making sense. But it has!!
(Thank G-d somebody in Euro-weenie-land is finally talking sense.)
If Hillary becomes President, God forbid, France might now be the place to immigrate.
And not just about Iran!
How about this comment from Sarko further down in the article: Russia is imposing its return on the world scene by using its assets, notably oil and gas, with a certain brutality...When one is a great power, one should not be brutal.
He dah ~man~!
I have four sons, 17 to 25 and like all good sons, they're conservative and they've always scoffed at anything "French".
It felt really weird, but just this past weekend, I interupted the youngest during some light hearted comment about France and mentioned to him that we ought to all take a couple of month's vacation from ridiculing France and give Sarkozy a chance to make a difference. I'm not sure he's ever heard me speak up for France and I'm really not sure that I ever have!!
Just seems fair to give them a chance to prove they're not the cheese eating surrender monkey's that Chirac made them all seem like. A couple of months, that's all :-)
No way. It’s a typical European threat:
“Don’t make us call the Americans!”
Am I dreaming? A French leader making sense?
Ping
Apropos your kid's remarks...IMHO a nutty attitude. You ought to ask them If you or they had been fighting in our American Revolution would they have turned down a French Musket, French Powder and Shot, French Boots, a French overcoat or blanket, French rations, the help of Rochambeau or deGrasse, or Lafayette, French loans, French Ships like the Bonhomme Richard?
Also, claiming to be a conservative has nothing to do with loving, or despising the French, or anyone else, for that matter.
Mais oui, Froggy can be a bit hard to take. But you know, in exchange for bailing out our butts with England, and giving us that deal on Louisiana, we ought to cut them a lot of slack. In fact, I am shocked, shocked I tell you that apparently not a man-jack of them is studying French, or planning a visit to Club Med.
Don’t buy a beret and throw away your Right Guard just yet. Apparently Sarkozy thinks bombing Iran would be “catastrophic.” Sounds more like his predecessor than like a real hawk. Read this from Yahoo News:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070827/ap_on_re_eu/france_sarkozy
Sarkozy seems like a good bloke- trying to take away from France it’s arrogrant attitude. He seems better on Iraq too. However, in a speech today which was generally positive, he called for a timetable for troop withdrawals from iraq:
‘Turning to Iraq, he called for “a clear timetable concerning the withdrawal of foreign troops”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6965438.stm
Whoa there, sounds to me like Sarkozy is equating “bombing Iran” as just as bad a Iran with the bomb. Don’t be fooled by double talk.
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