QUEBEC — Quebec sovereigntists cannot assume that the international community would automatically side with them after another referendum, says former Parti Quebecois premier Jacques Parizeau.

Parizeau said in an interview that he spent years working to line up foreign support before holding a sovereignty referendum in 1995.

He said current leaders of the sovereignty movement must do the same, and start working right away to persuade foreign countries to eventually recognize an independent Quebec.

He said he began his international push shortly after becoming PQ leader in 1988 and by 1995, he says, it was a given that France would recognize an independent Quebec and the U.S. would also respect the result of a Yes vote in that year's referendum.

None of that remains a given, he said.

"Fifteen years later, you can't take anything for granted," Parizeau told The Canadian Press in an interview.

"There's not much from 1995 that can be recopied. . . It's a whole new ballgame."

In recent years, for instance, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has expressed firm support for a united Canada. Even his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, eventually enjoyed warm relations with Ottawa after initially appearing to back Quebec independence.

The possibility of a third sovereignty referendum also appears, at this point, remote.

Support for independence has in recent years failed to approach reach its historic levels of the early 1990s, and the province's federalist Liberal government recently won its third consecutive election.