President Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday that the burka was not welcome in secular France, condemning the head-to-toe cover as a symbol of subjugation rather than the Muslim faith.
"The burka is not a sign of religion," he told lawmakers in a major policy speech. "It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic."
The speech came just two weeks after Mr Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama diverged on whether states should legislate on religious clothing, an issue which has sparked controversy in Europe.
France, home to an estimated five million Muslims, passed a law in 2004 banning headscarves or any other "conspicuous" religious symbol in state schools in a hotly contested bid to defend secularism.
Last year a Moroccan woman was refused French citizenship after social services said she wore a burka and was living in "submission" to her husband.
Mr Sarkozy told a special session of Parliament he was in favour of holding an inquiry sought by some French lawmakers into whether Muslim women who cover themselves fully in public undermine French secularism and women's rights.
But the President added "we must not fight the wrong battle, in the republic the Muslim religion must be respected as much as other religions".
The inquiry proposal has won support from politicians on the left and right, but France's official Muslim council accused lawmakers of wasting time on a fringe phenomenon.
"To raise the subject like this, via a parliamentary committee, is a way of stigmatising Islam and the Muslims of France," Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM), said last week.
There are no official figures but several thousand women are thought to wear the burka in France.
Mr Obama this month defended the choice of some Muslim women to wear the Islamic headscarf.
It is "important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practising religion as they see fit for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear," he said.
But Mr Sarkozy told him when the two leaders met in France that his country took a different view.
"Civil servants must not wear any outward sign of their religion, whether they are Catholics, Jewish, Orthodox, Protestants or Muslims," he said, adding that a woman could wear a headscarf provided it was her own decision.