France's Kouchner meets with Iraq president

Jun 1, 2008, 9:25 GMT

Baghdad - French Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner discussed with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani recent achievements and military operations carried out in Iraq during his two-day visit to the country, media sources said on Sunday.

During the talks, Talabani spoke about the newly launched security operations in Mosul, Basra and Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City. He stressed the mutual cooperation between the Iraqi forces and civilians that has helped the operations succeed and return calm to the Iraqi cities, the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency reported according to an official statement issued from the president's office.

The Iraqi president told Kouchner that Iraqis now enjoy a stable political, economic and security environment.

After meeting with Talabani on Saturday evening, the French foreign minister also discussed the issue of provincial elections with a delegation of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Sunni block with 44 parliamentary seats, VOI said.

According to the provincial elections law endorsed by the Iraqi presidency, the provincial elections should start by October. The law's supporters hope that the new local elections would remedy uneven provincial councils in which Iraq's Sunni Arabs in particular are under-represented

Such electoral distortions are the product of a Sunni Arab boycott of previous provincial elections.

Kouchner arrived in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya on a previously unannounced visit Saturday - his second after a three-day visit to Baghdad last August.

He started his trip with a tour of one of the city's monumental sites.

The French minister told reporters that the visit was in response to an invitation from Iraq's Vice-President Abdul-Mahdy.

Kouchner stressed that the visit would trigger 'a true enhancement in relations between France and the Iraqi people in addition to providing support to all southern Iraqi cities.'