An extraordinary diplomatic row was under way between France and Germany last night as both countries traded blows over the crisis at Airbus, the European planemaker.

With Louis Gallois, the chairman, reduced to the role of onlooker, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman made a highly unusual attack on the French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin.

Thomas Enders, the German joint chief executive of the Airbus parent, EADS, joined in the public Franco-German spat when he also slapped down Mr de Villepin for announcing 10,000 job cuts.

“Perhaps he knows more than me,’’ said Mr Enders as simmering tensions broke out into the open to leave the vaunted Franco-German axis under pressure.

President Chirac and Mrs Merkel will attempt to calm the row when they meet on Friday, according to Mr de Villepin.

The meeting comes after the main German shareholder, DaimlerChrysler, vetoed the Airbus chairman’s programme to save €2 billion (£1.3 billion) a year and rationalise the manufacturer's production system.

The veto, which was sparked by Mr Gallois’ plan to build the long-haul A350 in Toulouse, southwest France, plunged Airbus into what commentators described as a crippling deadlock.

Mr de Villepin irritated Germany with overt political interference in Airbus by telephoning Mr Gallois and telling him to avoid compulsory redundancies under the restructuring plan, dubbed Power 8.

“There must be an answer for everyone,” he said.

Berlin was further angered by his assertion that 10,000 job cuts had already been decided.

“With the best will in the world, I can’t tell you where the Prime Minister gets his information from,” said Mrs Merkel’s deputy spokesman, Thomas Steg.

The German Government also denied French claims that Mr Chirac and Mrs Merkel would decide Airbus’s fate at their summit this week.

However, French sources promptly accused the German side of hypocrisy.

“It’s the Germans who have been playing politics with this,” said one source in Paris.

He said the nub of the dispute was Mr Gallois’ view that French Airbus factories were better equipped than their German counterparts to manufacture the high-technology A350.

“The Germans are taking a purely mathematical approach, which involves dividing the work equally irrespective of investment and modernisation in the factories,” the source said that Mr Enders, who was appointed by DaimlerChrysler with a brief to block what is seen in Germany as a French plot to take over Airbus, claimed no decision had been made on the scale of the job cuts.

He would “talk about this in the coming days” with Mr Gallois.

The relationship between the two men is said to be tense after Mr Enders backed DaimlerChrysler's veto of the Power 8 restructuring.

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