French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner visits Baghdad

In 2003, former French President Jacques Chirac opposed US maneuvers at the UN intended to provide a legal pretext for an invasion. Kouchner, then a leading member of the French Socialist Party, was one of the few members of the French establishment to express some support for US actions, in the name of his theory of “humanitarian intervention.” Now, in the conservative government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, he is working to effect a certain alignment of French and US imperialist interests in the Middle East.

The pompous vagueness of Kouchner’s statements—he defined his objective for the visit as “expressing French solidarity, compassion, and support to the Iraqi people in all its constituent elements”—could not hide the essential thrust of his policy.

He said France had a “particular role” to play in the region, as “the Americans cannot get out of the situation by themselves,” and that “Europe and the UN must play a role in Iraq.” He repeatedly alluded to Kosovo, under US-NATO occupation since 1999, where Kouchner served as head of the UN Interim Administration from July 1999 to January 2001. In that post, he oversaw the dismantling of the old Yugoslav state institutions and their replacement by an apparatus tied to the ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army.

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