Chirac's message, delivered by a presidential spokeswoman and reported on France 2 TV, offers the latest manifestation of France's new "pragmatic" approach to world affairs, now that the war in Iraq is over, and there will be no more sweetheart deals with Saddam Hussein for France.
Now in control of Iraq, Washington wants U.N. sanctions, imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, lifted.
Chirac evidently transmitted his willingness to back the U.S. move to visiting Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik during a meeting in Paris.
Relations between the France and the United States, hurt in the run-up to the war, are slowly beginning to warm.
In a symbolic show, French Finance Minister Francis Mer and U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow toured Normandy's beaches Sunday, where U.S. forces helped liberate France from Nazi occupation in 1944.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is due into Paris for a Group of Eight foreign ministers meeting this week, and President George W. Bush is scheduled to meet with Chirac during the G8 summit in Evian, France, in early June.
Those meetings will present good opportunities to mend tattered relations, said Richard Haass, the director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department, during a visit to Paris last week.
Haass said France's best opportunity to mend relations with Washington would be to back a U.S.-British resolution at the Security Council to lift sanctions against Baghdad.
France earlier supported only suspending the sanctions, and continues to press for a strong U.N. role in post-war Iraq, which Washington has so far dismissed.
Copyright 2003 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.