French foreign minister makes surprise Iraq visit

BAGHDAD (AFP) - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner urged Iraqi leaders yesterday to work for a political solution to the crisis that has engulfed their country since the US-led invasion of 2003.

On the first visit by a senior French official since a US intervention that Paris vehemently opposed, Kouchner offered to support efforts by Iraqis and the United Nations to halt the bloodshed.

"We are ready to be useful, but the solution is in Iraqi hands, not in French hands," he told reporters at the foreign ministry after meeting his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshyar Zebari.

Kouchner's decision to make a three-day visit, so soon after President Nicolas Sarkozy made a fence-building visit to the United States, will be seen as a sign that France is ready to seek a role in Iraq.

But he made it clear that France had no regrets about its original decision to oppose US invervention in Iraq, and insisted there could be no military solution to the ensuing conflict.

"My understanding, and Mr Sarkozy's view, is that there is no military solution and this has always been the position of my country," he said, vowing to spend his visit listening to Iraqi ideas.

He also appeared to be in no hurry to increase France's involvement.

"This is just the beginning, I hope, of sort of an end to the crisis. We want to play our cards and our role, but not today -- neither tomorrow -- but yes, one of these days," he said.

Prior to his talks at the ministry, Kouchner made a brief stop at the United Nations' compound in the fortified Green Zone to pay tribute to 22 UN staff members who were killed in a bomb attack exactly four years earlier.

Among those who died was the head of the mission Sergio Vieira de Mello, a personal friend of Kouchner, and three officials who had worked with the French minister when he was the UN senior representative in Kosovo.

Accompanied by Zebari and the UN deputy special representative in Iraq, Michael von der Schulenburg, Kouchner laid a wreath in front of a simple memorial listing those killed in the blast.

Overhead, the blue UN banner flew at half mast, and afterwards Kouchner paid a personal tribute to his former spokeswoman Nadia Younes -- "my princess" -- and his former colleagues Jean Salim Kanaan and Fiona Watson.

The 2003 attack prompted the United Nations to order most personnel out of Iraq, but earlier this month the UN Security Council, under pressure from Washington, agreed to a limited expansion of its mission.

Asked if the United Nations should play a bigger role in Iraq, Kouchner replied: "I hope so. It is more up to the Iraqis than it is up to us. If it was only up to the French, the UN would play a very important role."

After the memorial service, Kouchner left with Zebari for a meeting at the foreign ministry.

Kouchner arrived four days after the country's most deadly single attack since 2003 killed more than 400 people, while the government is paralysed by tensions between its Shiite and Sunni Muslim members.

Before becoming a minister this year, Kouchner was an outspoken champion of the doctrine of "humanitarian intervention" and was one of a very few French public figures who actually supported the US invasion.

He favoured the overthrow of Iraq's then dictator Saddam Hussein, and he criticised French policy, which he said had left the United States and Britain with little choice but to go to war without UN backing.