French minister's Iraq trip welcomed by US
The American White House welcomed a symbolic unannounced visit to Iraq by France’s foreign minister.
It was the first trip to Baghdad by a senior French official since the war started and a gesture to the American effort in Iraq after years of icy relations over the US-led invasion. Bernard Kouchner said Paris wanted to “turn the page” and look to the future.
Kouchner said he was not in Iraq to offer initiatives or proposals but to listen to ideas on how his country might help stop the devastating violence.
After meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hosyhar Zebari, Kouchner said in English: “Now we are turning the page. There is a new perspective. We want to talk about the future. Democracy, integrity, sovereignty, reconciliation and stopping the killings. That’s my deep aim.”
“We hope that this visit will herald an increased level of engagement by France with Iraq, a level consistent with the activism of its foreign minister,” Zebari said, pointing to Kouchner’s humanitarian efforts as the former UN administrator for Kosovo and co-founder of the Nobel Prize-winning aid group Doctors Without Borders.
Kouchner drove from the airport in a heavily armoured convoy, stopping first at the UN compound in the Green Zone at a memorial to victims of the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad that killed UN special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other people. The two men were friends.
Kouchner said he timed his arrival to mark the fourth anniversary of the attack.
Asked at a news conference if the France was now ready to help the Americans who are mired in Iraq, the top French diplomat demurred and said he was on a fact-finding mission.
“We are ready to be useful, but the solution is in the Iraqis’ hands, not in the French hands,” he said, adding “I’m not frightened of the perspective of talking to the Americans.”
Kouchner later met with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, the Shiite leader struggling to save his crumbling government, a government official said.
Kouchner’s visit was welcomed in Washington, where the President Bush administration is facing a September 15 deadline to report to Congress on progress in Iraq as a result of the infusion of 30,000 more US troops in the first half of the year. American public opinion and congressional sentiment is running against the US effort and there are many calls for a timetable for withdrawing US troops.
“This is one more example, along with the new UN mandate, the neighbours conference process and recent announcements by Saudi Arabia to open an embassy and forgive Saddam-era debt, of a growing international desire to help Iraq become a stable and secure country,” said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
Merely stepping onto Iraqi soil was a major symbol of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s efforts to end any lingering US-French animosity over the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Former French President Jacques Chirac’s refusal to back the US-led military effort in Iraq led to a new low in France-US ties. France was also vilified in US public opinion, with some Americans boycotting French wines, and french fries taking on the name “freedom fries” in the House of Representatives cafeteria.
Chirac and President Bush eventually reconciled, but Sarkozy’s election in May was a fresh start.
Sarkozy, nicknamed “Sarko l’Americain” for his admiration of the United States’ go-getter spirit, met with Bush before he was elected and again for a casual get-together a week ago at the seaside holiday home of Bush’s parents in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Meanwhile in east Baghdad, a mortar barrage slammed into a mainly Shiite neighbourhood, killing 12 and wounding 31, police said, and a major battle raged north of the capital where residents of a Shiite city were fighting what police said was a band of al Qaida in Iraq gunmen.
Separately, Major General Rick Lynch, whose mission is to block the flow of weapons and fighters into the Baghdad area, said his troops are tracking about 50 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in their area – the first detailed allegation that Iranians have been training fighters within Iraq’s borders.
“We know they’re here and we target them as well,” he said, citing intelligence reports as evidence of their presence.
He declined to be more specific and said no Iranian forces have been arrested in his territory.
The military has stepped up allegations against Iran in recent weeks, saying it supplies militants with arms and training to attack US forces.
Iran denies the allegations and says it supports efforts to stop the violence.
