"Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well that's not very dangerous," Chirac said in the interview on Monday to the New York Times, the Paris-based International Herald Tribune and the French weekly Nouvel Observateur.

"Where would Iran drop this bomb ? On Israel ?" he asked. "It would not have gone off 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed to the ground," Chirac was quoted as saying by the three publications.

The French president called back the journalists to the Elysee Palace on Tuesday and asserted that he was retracting the statement.

"I should have paid better attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on the record," Chirac was quoted by the IHT as saying.

"It was an oversimplification...It is a formulation that I am taking back," the Nouvel Observateur quoted him as saying.

France has taking a leading role along with its European allies in trying to persuade Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment programme and comply with international demands for monitoring of its atomic activities.

Chirac, who is coming to the end of his second term in office, last month floated a plan to send a special envoy to Iran to discuss regional issues including Lebanon.

Iran said it would be ready to receive the French envoy, but the United States has voiced disapproval, saying that it would send the wrong signal at a time when Tehran is flouting international demands to suspend its uranium enrichment programme.

In the interview, Chirac also said that Iran's possesion of a nuclear bomb would encourage other countries in the region to follow suit.

"It is really very tempting for other countries in the region with large financial resources to say: 'Well, we too are going to do that: we're going to help others do it," the president said, according to the three publications.

He also retracted those remarks, saying: "Neither Saudi Arabia nor Egypt has made any declaration on these subjects, so it is not up to me to make them."

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