BEIRUT -- French President Jacques Chirac made his strongest statement yet against a military strike on Iraq, saying yesterday that "war is the worst solution" and that "everything must be done to avoid it."

Mr. Chirac spoke in Alexandria, Egypt, as he made his way to a summit of francophone countries in Beirut.

The francophone summit is usually a mainly cultural event, but it has taken on a political coloration this year because of its Middle Eastern venue and the presence of Mr. Chirac.

France has been resisting U.S. efforts to have the United Nations Security Council permit an attack on Iraq if Baghdad does not comply fully with UN weapons inspections.

"Our American friends would like this same resolution to authorize the international community, if one believes the Iraqi authorities are not doing what is necessary, to intervene militarily," Mr. Chirac said after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

"I have always thought that war is the worst solution. Everything must be done to avoid it," he added.

France is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and can therefore exercise a veto on any proposed resolution, and U.S. officials have been growing increasingly frustrated with French unwillingness to authorize force. Yesterday, Mr. Chirac hinted strongly that France would veto any resolution that seemed likely to lead to war.

"The region does not need another war if we can avoid it," he said.

Although cultural issues still dominate the official agenda of the francophone summit, bilateral discussions among the more than 50 leaders attending the summit will be dominated by the situation in the Middle East.

Earlier this week, Mr. Chirac also disputed the American position that there is a link between the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Iraqi regime.

In an interview with a Beirut newspaper in advance of the summit, the French leader said "no proof had been found" of a connection.

Officials from Canada, the Francophonie's second major sponsor, said Prime Minister Jean Chrétien agrees with that view.

In the past, Mr. Chrétien's position on a military strike against Iraq has been more ambivalent than that of Mr. Chirac. But at this week's summit, he may be inclined to distance himself from the United States. Canada's ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Duval, told the English-language Daily Star newspaper that Ottawa "believes force can achieve very little," and that it does not regard a military strike as a "solution to the current crisis."

The push to disarm Iraq, using military force if necessary, has been described by some of its critics as a coalition of English-speaking countries, since the most enthusiastic supporters of the action have been the United States, Britain and Australia.

The Francophonie is probably too diverse a group to develop a common policy on the crisis. The organization includes members from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North and South America, including more than 50 former colonies.

In Lebanon, which bid to host the summit three years ago in order to showcase the country's emergence from decades of civil war and foreign occupation, a number of political factions have welcomed it as a counterweight to U.S. regional policy.

That even includes the militant Islamist group Hezbollah, which Washington has branded a terrorist organization.

© 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc

###