French minister rapped for 'over the top' attack on British party

(LONDON) - French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde criticised as "over the top" Friday a fellow minister's comments that Britain's main opposition party's EU policies were pathetic and autistic.

French Europe Minister Pierre Lellouche sparked a storm here Thursday when he was quoted as attacking the Conservatives' pledge to take back some powers from the European Union if they win power next year.

Asked about Lellouche's comments, Lagarde said the important thing was that the 27-country EU could turn a page after the final ratification by the Czech president of the Lisbon Treaty on Tuesday.

The Conservatives -- who polls suggest will oust Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown in elections due by June -- had been demanding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, but dropped that pledge this week.

"I have huge sympathy for the fact that Britain will not require a referendum and I'm absolutely thrilled that Europe can move forward. That's really the positive that I want to focus on," Lagarde told BBC radio.

"The rest I think is very much over the top and overstated and I would not subscribe to it," she added.

In his original comments published by the Guardian newspaper Thursday, Lellouche launched an extraordinary broadside against Conservative leader David Cameron, saying his party's approach had "castrated" Britain in Europe.

"It's pathetic. It's just very sad to see Britain, so important in Europe, just cutting itself out from the rest," he said, accusing Tory foreign affairs spokesman and former leader William Hague of a "very bizarre sense of autism."

Later in the day he backtracked in comments to the BBC, saying by "pathetic" he had meant "sad," that he didn't realise autistic could be offensive in English, and that he thought his comments had been off the record.

Hague dismissed Lellouche's comments as "one little emotional outburst from one French minister."

Cameron had long campaigned for a British referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if it had not been ratified and he took power. Polls suggest such a vote would almost certainly have rejected the treaty.

He dropped that plan a day after Czech President Vaclav Klaus signed the reform treaty, but insisted he would seek opt-outs on human rights plus some EU social and employment legislation.