French foreign minister on listening visit in Iraq

PARIS, Aug 19 (Reuters) French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner arrived in Baghdad today, his ministry said, the highest-level French official to visit Iraq since the war began in 2003.

A French diplomatic source said it was a listening trip in which Kouchner would speak to the representatives of all of Iraq's different communities and members of government.

''At the invitation of Mr. Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, the foreign minister has just begun an official visit to Baghdad,'' the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

''Bernard Kouchner is in Baghdad to express a French message of solidarity with the Iraqi people and to listen to the representatives of all communities.'' France led international opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 under former President Jacques Chirac.

This month President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President George W Bush stressed friendship over disagreement at a lunch at the Bush family estate aimed at improving relations strained by the Iraq war.

Kouchner, popular in France due to humanitarian work that included co-founding Nobel Peace Prize-winning aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, is also one of the few French politicians who backed military intervention in Iraq. He said he opposed the war but was also against Saddam Hussein's regime.

The diplomatic source said France had informed Washington of his visit to Baghdad, but said the trip's timing was not linked to Sarkozy's meeting with Bush.

The source said the trip was part of a series of French initiatives to take more of an interest in global conflicts, which besides Iraq also include Darfur, Lebanon and Kosovo.

The trip also coincides with the fourth anniversary of the truck bomb attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad that killed UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, a personal friend of Kouchner.

REUTERS SBC PM2100