Total, in spotlight, defends Iran and Myanmar deals

By Muriel Boselli and Marcel Michelson

PARIS, Sept 27 (Reuters) - French oil group Total (TOTF.PA) on Thursday said a departure from Myanmar would only aggravate the situation there and added a possible Iran deal was still far off after the French president urged investment restraint.

The world's fourth-largest publicly traded integrated oil and gas company was put on the spot by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday when he called for a freeze of investments by French companies in Myanmar, where the biggest street protests for 20 years are taking place and several people died.

Total is one of the biggest foreign investors in Burma where its joint venture earns the military regime hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to the Burma Campaign UK Web site.

"France calls on all of its private companies, for example Total, to show the greatest restraint in their investments in Myanmar, and to not make any new ones," Sarkozy told reporters after meeting Myanmar opposition politicians.

Total said no new investment was planned in Myanmar and defended its presence there saying oil and gas reserves were not necessarily located in democracies.

"We don't have heavy investments in this country and we don't plan any new investment there," a Total spokeswoman said.

"If Total were to leave Myanmar, others would take our place and could treat local staff not as well as we do," she said.

Total leads a consortium called Yadana, in the country since 1992, that extracts gas offshore and this has been attacked frequently by human rights activists.