A 'non' from Chirac means Blair cannot get his mandate

After weeks of speculation and carefully phrased threats, President Jacques Chirac has made his position on the French veto clear. It means that whatever amendments are made to the British-American-Spanish draft resolution there can now be no formal UN approval for an invasion of Iraq.

M. Chirac said he believed that the resolution would not, in any case, gain the nine votes out of 15 it needs to pass the Security Council. If that situation changed, he said, "then, at that moment, France will vote no". He also thought two other permanent members of the Security Council ­ Russia and China ­ would also cast no votes, or de facto vetoes.

In an interview with two television news anchormen in the ornate Ambassadors' Room of the Elysée Palace, with French and European flags crossed behind him, M. Chirac rejected suggestions that France was anti-American or in search of diplomatic glory.

"We are not at all in search of conflict with America," he said. "We have a position of principle, a moral position. Are we going to have a war when a chance still exists of avoiding it?

"If one chance in a million exists of avoiding war, with all its human and political consequences, we should take it."

He said the United States should accept that it had beaten Saddam Hussein's regime. UN inspections were gradually disarming Iraq, which remained a "dangerous country" but one which posed no immediate threat. Since Washington had "achieved its objectives", there would be no loss of face if it did not go to war, he said.

M. Chirac confirmed that he would like to go to New York for the decisive vote in the Security Council but he said that he would only do so if there was a "consensus" among other heads of state and governments that this was an appropriate idea. He would not go "alone".

The President rejected suggestions that a French veto would have dire consequences for Franco-American relations. A veto was "normal", he said, and part of the rules of the game. France and America had "always gone hand in hand" in important moments, he said, and they would do so again. Besides, he said, it would not be possible for the US to impose economic sanctions on France without imposing them on the whole European Union.

France has only used its veto against a US-supported motion once before, in 1956, along with Britain, during the Suez crisis. In the 48 years since the UN was founded, France has used its veto only 18 times, compared with 32 times by Britain, 73 times by the US, 118 times by the USSR/ Russia and four times by China.

Meanwhile, the French Foreign Minister made a lightning tour of three African countries yesterday to try to secure a majority, or blocking minority, against war without the need for Paris to cast its veto. Dominique de Villepin received a polite but non-committal response in Angola, Cameroon, and Guinea, which together with Mexico, Chile and Pakistan hold the six "undecided" votes in the UN Security Council.

M. de Villepin was being trailed around Africa by Baroness Amos, a British Foreign Office minister, who was presumably under orders to match, on behalf of the US and the UK, any offers or threats made by France.

In a joint press conference with M. de Villepin, the Angolan Foreign Minister, Joao Miranda said: "Angola's position is closer to neither the US nor to France. It is Angola's position.

"Angola is for peace but the disarmament of Iraq is a primary question." The US is Angola's biggest trading partner and its largest single aid donor. American assistance to Angola totalled £80m last year.