France wants EU to pressure firms away from Iran

By Francois Murphy

PARIS (Reuters) - France is pushing for all European Union countries to advise their companies against bidding for contracts in Iran and to reduce their investments there, President Nicolas Sarkozy's spokesman said on Thursday.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has said France wants the EU to pass its own sanctions against Iran, in parallel to those it is pushing for at the United Nations Security Council, because Iran refuses to suspend uranium enrichment.

France, Britain, Germany, the United States, Russia and China are due to meet on Friday to discuss a possible third round of U.N. sanctions against Iran for atomic work that could potentially be used to make nuclear weapons.

"No one believes the enrichment program being conducted by Iran is peaceful. For us, a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable," Sarkozy's spokesman David Martinon told a weekly news conference, adding that talks on a third round of sanctions against Iran "can take time".

"That is why we have in mind additional measures that are notably recommendations made by European Union countries -- we wish to obtain that from all countries of the European Union, we are not the only ones who want it," Martinon said, declining to specify which other countries supported the move.

Iran denies charges that it is secretly seeking nuclear weapons. It says it only wants to master nuclear technology to generate electricity.

Without calling them sanctions, Martinon said France wanted: "recommendations made to European companies to at least not bid for new markets in Iran, and as far as financial institutions are concerned, to lower their exposure and their investments."

It was not immediately clear whether these measures were the same as or in addition to those called for by Kouchner, who said earlier this week France wanted EU sanctions against Iran.

"Those that are effective are the Americans' ones -- economic, on large fortunes and banks," the Le Monde daily quoted him on Tuesday as saying.

A French diplomat said France wanted EU sanctions to limit or prevent the activities of certain Iranian financial, credit and insurance institutions in the 27-nation bloc.

In an interview on RTL radio and LCI television on Sunday, Kouchner said France had advised its big companies, including oil giant Total, not to bid for projects in Iran.

(Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry)