Mitterrand urges close UK ties: The French President, in an interview with Julian Nundy, says that he regrets the missed opportunities to work with Britain

PRESIDENT Francois Mitterrand will leave office after 14 years regretting that the Channel Tunnel is his only significant joint achievement with Britain.

In an interview concentrating on foreign policy themes, Mr Mitterrand said that France and Germany had worked closely together on many issues during his years in the Elysee Palace. But joint projects with 'Mrs Thatcher's England' had never progressed, Chunnel apart, beyond the planning stage. A more fruitful London-Paris relationship was 'desirable', he said, and not excluded by the closeness of the friendship between Paris and Bonn.

The President said France was not ready to commit its nuclear deterrent - or force de frappe - to the defence of the European Union as a whole. He also defended the role of the United Nations in the Bosnian war.

The interview, given to the Independent, La Repubblica of Italy, El Pais of Spain, the Suddeutsche Zeitung of Germany and Le Nouvel Observateur of France, was billed by aides of Mr Mitterrand as part of his 'political testament' that the President planned to make before he stepped down after 14 years in office next May.

Mr Mitterrand was asked for his version of Baroness Thatcher's statement in her memoirs that she had suggested that France and Britain work together to prevent German unification.

The President responded: 'At one point, when she was very hostile to the unification of Germany, she considered that France and England should prevent it. I replied that, even if I effectively wanted the Federal Republic to commit itself firmly on guaranteeing frontiers and on the known principles of European stability, I would not renege on Franco-German friendship without which there would be no European construction.' Mr Mitterrand added: 'France and Germany have done lots of things together, while with the England of Mrs Thatcher we remained at the planning stage except, of course, for the Channel Tunnel.'

However, the entente with Germany did not exclude an entente with England 'and this would be desirable too'.

In his Elysee Palace office, apart from antique tapestries, the main piece of decoration was a large photograph of a mock-up of the four towers of the new national library, the Bibliotheque de France, one of the grands travaux which are the hallmark of his rule.

Ahead of today's Conference on Stability in Europe in Paris, aimed at containing the conflicts arising from the fall of Communism, the Socialist President's tone was generally optimistic.

Asked if the Bosnian war had harmed the credibility of international organisations, Mr Mitterrand said it had put them 'to a tough test. But denying the role and the usefulness of the United Nations - which organises negotiations, which sends forces of interposition, which prevents the generalisation of the conflict - under cover of an apparently pacifist discourse, also inflames the war. Sarajevo is breathing, so is Gorazde. Thanks to whom?'

Saying that the security zones had finally been respected, Mr Mitterrand said time, 'therefore credibility', had been lost in Gorazde, but, 'the UN's policy was imposed. Condemning negotiation comes down to preferring war and this is a war that could spread'.

He added: 'Now that there is a good understanding between the big European powers, I hope they will prevent contagion and that they have not forgotten the lessons of the past.' Recalling that the Maastricht treaty had given the EU the task of conducting a joint EU foreign and security policy, Mr Mitterrand noted that the treaty had only come into effect at the end of 1993, and it was early to criticise a lack of European resolve.

On France's nuclear capacity, Mr Mitterrand said: 'The French deterrent was made to protect national territory and to defend vital interests which are not defined in advance but whose interpretation depends on the head of state.

'If Europe gets to the point where it can be considered a sufficiently united territory to be defended against the same dangers and in the name of the same vital interests, then I shall be, in France's name, disposed to begin such a negotiation' to put nuclear arms at Europe's disposal. 'That would suppose, there is no point in pretending otherwise, a lot of progress in Europe. One day one of my successors will have to decide.'

Asked if he believed in the use of nuclear weapons to contain 'madmen', countries which refuse international control, and had obtained nuclear arms, Mr Mitterrand said, 'He who replies to the madman like that is mad himself. We cannot settle civil wars and regional and ethnic wars with atomic strikes.'

Asked to sum up the rule by his Socialist Party from 1981 until last year, with two years of interruption from 1986 to 1988, Mr Mitterrand said that 'conservative forces still control the means of information, have the money, and the administration (civil service) is still imbued with their ideology. We probably did not make enough inroads into the administration'.

Pressed to name the biggest mistake of his career, Mr Mitterrand said: 'My political life is not over. It's not time to draw up the balance-sheet. Historians will do that. My greatest regret - I am not saying my greatest mistake - has been to have to govern France at the worst time of crisis and not be able to end, or push back, unemployment'.

(Photograph omitted)