France pledges support to stabilize post-Islamic State Iraq
BAGHDAD - France will help reconstruction and reconciliation efforts in Iraq as it emerges from the war against Islamic State, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Saturday 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, Islamic State's capital in Iraq.
"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 Daesh is not finished, it is entering a phase of stabilization, of reconciliation, of reconstruction, a phase of peace," Le Drian said, calling Islamic State by its Arabic acronym.
France will give a 430 million euro ($513 million) loan to Iraq before the end of the year, a French diplomatic source said.
