French Foreign Minister Calls for New Iraqi Premier

PARIS — France’s foreign minister risked fracturing his country’s new relationship with America yesterday, by calling for Prime Minister al-Maliki of Iraq to be replaced.In an interview published in Newsweek, Bernard Kouchner, who visited Baghdad last week, said: “I just had [Secretary of State Rice] on the phone 10 or 15 minutes ago, and I told her, ‘Listen, he’s got to be replaced.'” The remarks came a day before President Sarkozy is to address a gathering of ambassadors in Paris to outline a more assertive role for France on the world stage.“Many people believe the prime minister ought to be changed. I don’t know if that will go through though, because it seems President Bush is attached to Mr. Maliki. But the government is not functioning,” Mr. Kouchner said. Last week, Mr. Bush defended the record of Mr. Maliki, calling him “a good guy, a good man with a difficult job.”Mr. Bush had however earlier expressed his “frustration” with Mr. Maliki and his failure to unite sectarian factions within the government, while several prominent American senators have called for Iraq’s Parliament to vote him out, raising the pressure on the prime minister.Mr. Sarkozy, who is expected to stand behind his foreign secretary’s latest remarks in Paris today, told a cabinet meeting on Friday: “France must be present in Iraq, France must be present in countries throughout the Arab world. She must have a foreign policy that shows international influence.”In Baghdad, Mr. Maliki demanded an official apology for Mr. Kouchner’s remarks.Since taking office in May, Mr. Sarkozy has been active on the diplomatic front, shifting from the stance of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who had been the most vocal opponent of Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy. The 52-year-old French leader is widely seen as pro-American, spending a two-week holiday at a lakeside resort in the state of New Hampshire this month, during which he held what the White House described as a “heart-to-heart talk” with Mr. Bush over lunch at the president’s family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.In another interview published over the weekend, Mr. Kouchner told Le Parisien newspaper: “We are not making anti-Americanism the basis of our policy. That is perhaps a bit of a change.”Mr. Kouchner also called for more European involvement in Iraq, saying that “everything is at stake there, even for children and grand-children.” He called the current fighting there the extension of “6,000 years of violence.”“The crisis in Iraq is, as I said, a crisis that threatens all of us. … The more European ministers and delegations we get in there the better.”Mr. Kouchner took French foreign policy in a new direction last week when he paid a visited Baghdad, offering to help stabilize the country four years after France led opposition to the American-led invasion. Mr. Kouchner said his trip to Baghdad — the first by a senior French official since the American invasion — had convinced him of “the need for France to be present in crisis spots.”

French Foreign Minister Calls for New Iraqi Premier

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