WASHINGTON — The French foreign minister apologized yesterday for suggesting during a trip to Baghdad that Prime Minister al-Maliki should resign his post and that support was growing for his resignation.

Bernard Kouchner said in a speech in Paris that he apologized to Mr. Maliki for remarks he made to reporters in Baghdad. After the speech, he told members of the French diplomatic press corps: “It’s not the French foreign minister’s role to decide who will or not become a prime minister in another country,” the Associated Press reported.

He added that he had only attempted to pass along what he understood to be the wishes of the Iraqi people, a gibe that will likely still sting Mr. Maliki, who on Sunday touted a new agreement to release a slate of prisoners and accede to a set of principles that may unify his fractured government.

Under the leadership of President Sarkozy, France appears to be taking a tougher line on Iran, the country that provided the start-up funds, safe harbor, and training for Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party in the 1980s, when it was closely associated with terrorist attacks in Kuwait. In his latest swing through the Middle East, Mr. Kouchner pointedly canceled a scheduled trip to Tehran. For its part, the Iranian Foreign Ministry this month announced that Mr. Maliki had invited the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Baghdad for a state visit.

At the United Nations, France diplomatically opposed the 2003 international intervention that toppled Saddam Hussein made Mr. Maliki’s government possible. France has contributed no troops to the coalition forces in Iraq and has pledged little money for its reconstruction. But the election of Mr. Sarkozy seems to be changing that posture.

Yesterday, Mr. Sarkozy gave the first major foreign policy speech of his young presidency and warned of a confrontation between Islam and the West. He also said the standoff between the United Nations and Iran over its nuclear program is the most significant crisis facing the world today. The diplomatic process, which involves a third U.N. Security Council resolution to be debated this fall, is the only alternative to “the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran,” he said.

At the same time, Mr. Sarkozy offered to conduct high-level talks with Syria, a country the Bush administration worked with France to marginalize diplomatically after the Syrian regime was suspected of killing a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, in February 2005. Mr. Sarkozy’s offer, in broad terms, would be high-level discussions in exchange for Syrian steps to end its strong-arming of Lebanese politicians.

Despite the icy aftereffects of Mr. Kouchner’s remarks about Mr. Maliki, the Sarkozy administration appears more willing than that of Mr. Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, to play the role of mediator in Iraq. In an essay that appeared yesterday in the International Herald Tribune, Mr. Kouchner offered France’s good offices to help build up a “democratic Iraq.”

Mr. Kouchner is not the only Western politician to call on Mr. Maliki to resign. Last week, both Senator Clinton, a Democrat of New York who is running for president, and Senator Levin, a Democrat of Michigan who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said they hoped Iraq’s parliament would vote out Mr. Maliki. When asked for comment yesterday about Mr. Maliki’s reaction, neither Mr. Levin’s nor Mrs. Clinton’s office offered a comment.

[Mr. Sarkozy also said the prospect of a American troop pullout from Iraq would help lead to a political settlement among the warring parties there, according to Bloomberg News.]