France links Israel violence to Iran standoff

PARIS, July 14 (Reuters) French President Jacques Chirac condemned Israel's offensive in Lebanon and warned that, combined with the standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the crisis risked creating even worse conflict in the region.

''We are in a situation of great fragility which brings great instability with it,'' Chirac said in his traditional Bastille Day interview on French television. ''We are in a dangerous situation. We are in a very dangerous situation,'' he said.

He said Israel's offensive in Lebanon following the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight more by Hizbollah guerrillas was ''completely disproportionate''.

''One can ask oneself whether there isn't a sort of desire to destroy Lebanon,'' he said.

But he also condemned Hizbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, which abducted a third Israeli soldier, as ''totally irresponsible'' for the attacks which provoked Israel's response.

Asked if he felt the Syrians and Iranians were helping the two groups in the recent rise in violence against Israel, he said Hizbollah and Hamas ''could not have taken these initiatives alone''.

Chirac said the upsurge in violence in the region appeared to be connected with the standoff between Iran and the West over Tehran's plans to develop its nuclear capacity.

World powers put Iran on a collision course with the United Nations earlier this week, asking the Security Council to intervene after Tehran failed to respond quickly enough to a package of incentives aimed at defusing a nuclear standoff.

The West says Iran wants to enrich uranium to produce atomic bombs. Tehran denies this and has refused to abandon its right to nuclear technology.

''In the Middle East region, we have this crisis with Israel and Lebanon, these initiatives taken utterly irresponsibly by Hamas and Hizbollah along with the more-or-less connected affair of Iran,'' the French President said.

The United States holds Syria and Iran, which both support Hizbollah, responsible for the attacks on Israel.

''We are in a situation that needs to be handled with a great deal of experience, a great deal of delicacy because we are permanently on the edge of the abyss,'' he said.

REUTERS PKS HS2116