By Yann Le Guernigou
TOKYO (Reuters) - France wants to host a meeting of G20 nuclear industry officials in May to discuss ideas for new global standards in the wake of the disaster in Japan, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday.
Sarkozy spoke while making the first visit by a foreign leader to Japan since a March 11 earthquake and tsunami battered its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor complex, alarming atomic-powered countries worldwide.
The G20 meeting would lay the groundwork for a special International Atomic Energy Agency conference on nuclear safety scheduled for late June, according to Sarkozy.
"We will ask the nuclear safety authorities of the Group of 20 countries to meet, if possible, in Paris during May, to define international nuclear safety standards," he said during a reception at the French embassy in Tokyo.
"We need international safety standards before the end of the year," said Sarkozy, whose country heads the G20 and G8 for most of 2011. "It is absolutely not normal that international nuclear safety regulations don't exist."
A meeting of IAEA energy advisers has already been set for April 5 in Abu Dhabi. But French Energy Minister Eric Besson said on Wednesday that G20 energy ministers would meet before that to discuss safety tests on nuclear plants.
Sarkozy, who flew to Tokyo after addressing a G20 seminar in China on global monetary reform, told Japan it had the support of the whole world as it strives to contain its nuclear calamity and deal with the deaths of some 28,000 people in the 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami that followed.
A team of French nuclear experts, including the CEO of state-owned Areva, flew to Tokyo earlier this week to help Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) as it battles to bring its crippled Fukushima plant under control.
France is the world's most nuclear-dependent country, producing 75 percent of its electricity from 58 reactors.
Sarkozy was accompanied by Environment Minister Nathalie Koscuisko-Morizet and other officials.
(Reporting by Yann Le Guernigou; Writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Mark Heinrich)