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Posted on 09/13/2001 6:19:54 PM PDT by dighton

POLITICAL leaders in France and Germany urged President Bush yesterday to avoid a belligerent response, as fears grew in Europe of the consequences of swift and ruthless military reaction to the terrorist attacks.

Lionel Jospin, the French Prime Minister, said the Americans should be "reasonable" in their response. Alain Richard, his defence minister, said the attacks were "not acts of war".

The comments, echoed by senior German ministers if not by the Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, contradicted statements by President Bush and his Secretary of State Colin Powell.

M Jospin said: "We must vigorously condemn and combat terrorism. But we must not allow ourselves to be led into considerations of a conflict between the western world and the Islamic world, where we have many friends and partners."

The remarks from the Socialist prime minister were aimed at reassuring both the France's political Left and its Muslim population, which numbers six million. But they will be seen as further evidence of disagreements between France and America on big foreign policy issues.

The comments by M Richard will also undermine American confidence in France's commitment to joint reprisals as outlined by Nato members on Wednesday. He said: "I think that this was a terrorist attack of particular gravity.

"American democracy is clearly endangered by such action, but in my opinion a war is something else entirely." France disagrees with US policy on missile defence, the bombing of Iraq and what it sees as American cultural imperialism.

Rudolf Scharping, the German defence minister, also cautioned against launching swift military strikes. "I hope we all remain calm and do not now speak of a state of alarm. We do not face a war.

"We face the question of what is an appropriate response," he told German television. "Not in the sense of revenge and retribution, but in order to be able to fight and break international terror."

France's maverick health minister, Bernard Kouchner, went as far yesterday as to put the attacks down to a "series of errors" by America. "America's made a real mistake in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which was to train the Taliban," M Kouchner said.

"To think now that there is some kind of consensus of 'honourable' nations against the 'bad' terrorists, is simply not true."

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