TEHRAN -- "France as a member of the European Union (EU) is in favor of Iran's joining the World Trade Organization (WTO)," said a French Embassy official here on Tuesday.

Economic and commercial attache in the Embassy of France in Tehran Ves Cadilhon said in an exclusive interview with IRNA that France will do anything at its disposal to counterbalance the pressure exerted by U.S. not to allow Iran into the organization.

Pointing to the ratification of Iran's new foreign investment law he said: "The new investment law would definitely have a better psychological effect if the world did not have to wait two years for it to pass,", adding that one should wait and see how it would be applied.

Referring to the first article of the law regarding the repatriation of capital, he said that, "It covers only three options in which two of them are about regaining the profit by exporting the produced goods, these options could have been more in order to allow the investor to maneuver. In other words if a hotel chain wants to invest in Iran, it can not repatriate its profit according to this very law for it does not have any goods to export." Addressing the Iranian officials' emphasis on the import of technology, the French diplomat said: "We export a lot of technology to Iran, for instance when Totalfinaelf is operating in the oil fields and they are using a lot of high technology equipment, we are not exporting commodities but these are technologies."

"We are also exporting technology in the fields of electricity, and have cooperation in the telecommunication and locomotive industries," Cadilhon said. The French diplomat also said that, "French-Iranian trade interaction in 2001 reached 1944 million euros which in comparison with 2000 figures does not show much difference."

"In 2001 France's export to Iran reached 1145 million euros (an increase of 51 percent) whereas Iran's export to France reached 799 million euros (a 31 percent drop), in other words the trade balance in the mentioned year was in favor of France by 346 million euros," he added.

"The decrease in Iranian export to France was due to the decrease in the Iranian OPEC quota," Cadilhon said.

"France's export to Iran are mainly auto parts (406 million euro), mechanical machinery (212 million euro), chemical products (120 million euro), electrical devices (89 million euro), metals (81 million euro), and medicine (48 million euro), so France along with Italy are in the third place, after South Korea and Germany in exporting goods to Iran," he added. Cadilhon said: "Oil is the main Iranian export to France valued at 718 million euro per annum (90 percent of all the Iranian export to France), and in the past several years Iran has been the fourth or fifth oil exporter to France."

"In the car manufacturing industry, since 1990 Peugeot and Citroen have singed contracts with Iranian car manufacturing giants Saipa, Iran Khodro, to produce 405, 206 and Xantia cars, and Peugeot now makes up 20 percent of the Iranian car market," the French diplomat added. On the criticism raised by the environment protection department regarding the pollution rate of the French produced cars, he said: "If there is air pollution from the Peugeot, it is because of the level of octane in your gasoline, and it goes back to the standards which the Iranian ministry of industry asked the French car manufacturers to base the car on, in other words we sell what the consumer wants to buy."

"Once you want to make a car you have to go step by step, you can not go to the latest technology and start making them, you get the car according to your country's capacity and financial status," the French diplomat explained. Advising the Iranian exporters on their commodities sent to Europe, he said: "Some of the Iranian goods do have the standard to enter the European Union but the most important thing for the Iranian products besides getting more and more standardized is to stabilize their quality."

The French commercial and economic attache addressing the possibility of France employing Iranian skilled workers said the French immigration laws do not allow absorption of new workers, since the country enjoys quite sufficient professional workforce.