By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Jan 20 2006 (IPS)

French President Jacques Chirac’s threat that France could use nuclear weapons to retaliate against terrorist attacks has provoked strong opposition.

Members of the opposition Socialist party condemned Chirac’s threats. Jack Lang, nominee for Socialist candidature for the 2007 presidential elections told reporters that “a parliamentary and national debate should be organised to discuss the legitimacy of the French nuclear armament, and its enormous costs.”

The French nuclear weapons programme costs up to four billion dollars a year. The annual state deficit is 56 billion dollars and the total debt 1.1 trillion dollars (a trillion is a thousand billion).

“Many of our compatriots question the need to keep spending to maintain a nuclear weapons programme, which, by definition, should never be used,” Communist leader Helene Luc told IPS.

Analyst Laurent Zecchini wrote in Le Monde that “the necessity of maintaining the ‘force de frappe’ is less and less evident after the end of the cold war.” The ‘force de frappe’ is the name given to the French nuclear weapons programme.

“Russia, the former enemy, is now a French diplomatic partner, and even NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) is searching for a role,” Zecchini said. Under these circumstances, “why should France maintain its nuclear weapons programme?”

In a speech Thursday at the marine military base Ile Longue on the north-western Atlantic coast, Chirac announced that France would use nuclear weapons to “guarantee our strategic supplies and to defend our allies.”

Chirac also said France would use nuclear weapons against “state leaders who would take recourse to terrorist methods against us, and all others who would consider attacking France with weapons of mass destruction.”

Chirac did not spell out what represents “strategic supplies” and which forces he thought could consider attacking France with weapons of mass destruction, but most people believe he was talking about oil, the Arab states and Iran.

The European Union, represented by France, Germany, and Britain, is currently leading negotiations with Iran to prevent authorities in Teheran from resuming a nuclear programme.

Under the old French nuclear policy, its weapons would be a deterrent, and it would never strike first. That policy seems now to have changed.

“To think that France would use nuclear weapons against a country only because one of its leaders would consider attacking France is a geopolitical aberration,” Green party leader Noel Mamerre told IPS. “That would mean that we would be ready to let a whole population pay for the murderous folly of a handful of leaders.”

Mamerre said Chirac’s remarks call for a review of military policy. “We cannot leave the responsibility for the use of nuclear weapons to one single man,” he said. “The best way to fight terrorism is to reinforce our own democratic values, and not believe in the chimera of impossible nuclear strikes.”

Luc said Chirac’s new nuclear weapons policy would “bring us back to the Cold War and to a new form of colonialism, now under the disguise of the defence of our strategic supplies.”

France should instead announce “strong new measures to encourage the largest possible number of countries to sign the non-proliferation treaty.” This treaty has been signed by 61 countries.

Only five countries officially possess nuclear weapons – France, Britain, China, Russia, and the United States. Four other countries – India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea – are also thought to have nuclear weapons.

Chirac’s speech has caused concern abroad. In Germany leader of the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party Guido Westerwelle urged Chancellor Angela Merkel to “encourage Chirac to hold back” from nuclear weapons.

Leftist foreign policy analyst Norman Peach told IPS that “Germany and other European countries should stop France’s risky nuclear weapons policy.”

France is believed to possess up to 300 nuclear heads, and this arsenal has been modernised to allow pre-emptive strikes, military experts say.

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