The president of the European Jewish Congress has backed French President Jacques Chirac’s decision to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
EJC head Jean Kahn, also the president of the Consistoire Central, which oversees the religious needs of the French Jewish community, recently wrote an opinion piece in the daily Le Monde explaining why he thought that France should have nuclear weapons.
The weapons serve as a deterrent, Kahn wrote.
Citing the situation in the fractured former Yugoslavia, where no Western power has wanted to intervene, Kahn concluded that when a country has to defend itself, it can only count on its own strength.
He also argued that France needed nuclear weapons at a time when countries such as Iran are trying to acquire a nuclear capacity.
If Iran has its way, he wrote, it would be equipped with nuclear weapons and would be able to spread its fundamentalist revolution throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
France would be heavily involved in such a scenario and would need nuclear weapons for protection, he said in his piece.
Some 62 percent of the general French population said it opposed nuclear testing, according to polls conducted last week.
The French Socialist opposition has said it is against the resumption of nuclear tests.
During his two terms, former French President Francois Mitterrand, a Socialist, allowed more than 80 tests. However, he stopped the tests in 1992.
Nuclear plants produce almost all French electric power.
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