France pledges support to stabilise post-IS Iraq

BAGHDAD / Reuters

France will help reconstruction and reconciliation efforts in Iraq as it emerges from a war against IS, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said after talks with Iraqi officials in Baghdad.
France is a main partner in the US-led coalition helping Baghdad fight the militants who seized parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The coalition provided key air and ground support to Iraqi forces in the nine-month campaign to take back Mosul, IS’s capital in Iraq.
The city’s fall in July effectively marked the end of the “caliphate” declared by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over parts of Iraq and Syria. Iraqi forces were close to taking back full control of IS’s northwestern stronghold of Tal Afar.
“We are present in the war and we will be present
in the peace,” Le Drian told a news conference in Baghdad with French Defence Minister Florence Parly and
Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. “Even if our
joint combat against IS is not finished, it is entering
a phase of stabilisation, of reconciliation, of reconstruction, a phase of peace,” Le Drian said, calling IS by its
Arabic acronym.
During the talks, Iraqi Prime Minister Hayder al-Abadi urged France to invest in Iraq, “at the economic, commercial and investment levels”, according to a statement from his office. France will grant a 430 million euro ($513
million) loan to Iraq before the end of the year, a French diplomatic source said.