PARIS, Sept 16: Sixty-five per cent of the French said in a just-published poll that they are firmly opposed to a United States attack on Iraq, and this as Paris grows closer to supporting a Washington intervention.

Chirac has repeatedly said that France would support an attack only if it were ordered by the United Nations, and only once Iraq had firmly refused the return of UN inspectors.

The French diplomats also remark that in a previous IFOP (Institut Francais d’Opinion Publique) poll, 75 per cent of the French had disapproved a US attack on Iraq.

Meanwhile, three leading French parliamentarians, who are members of Chirac’s ruling party, have made their way to Baghdad to express their disagreement with French policy with regard to Iraq.

The visit has been publicly disavowed by the French Foreign Ministry with a spokesman for Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin noting that it was “inopportune” and “counter- productive” to French efforts to bring about a solution which would preclude the need for a US attack on Iraq.

But, one of the three deputies, Thierry Mariani, who represents the Vaucluse in the French National Assembly, said that he’d chosen to undertake the private visit to Baghdad because “we are engaged in a process that is leading to war”.