French/EU Partnerships.

PM Maleki on May 3 began a state visit to Paris, during which he was to sign agreements to boost commercial partnerships between Iraq and France. This came after Maleki and his cabinet members met with British leaders from PM Gordon Brown down in London on April 30-May 2. Iraq's London conference ended on May 1 with considerable success as a number of agreements were signed.

The base for the proposed partnership with France, one of similar arrangements with the other EU powers, had been set during French President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to Iraq several months ago. It was advanced further in April during a visit to Paris by a large delegation under Iraq's Shi'ite Vice-President 'Adel 'Abdul-Mahdi, a French-educated economist.

A key man in the leadership of the Shi'ite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and a close friend of Iraq's Kurdish President Jalal Talabani, 'Abdul-Mahdi believes a pacified Iraq must regain its proper place in the Middle East and on the international scene, also with emphasis on the Arab world. This was the message 'Abdul-Mahdi in April brought to France - a country he sees as a major partner in the reconstruction of Iraq after three decades of devastating wars.

Iraq is courting France and is, in turn, being courted by it. Contracts worth several billions of euros are being negotiated, essentially in the fields of petroleum, security and infrastructure. President Sarkozy is anxious for France to gain a privileged position in Iraq, while Baghdad sees its growing links with Paris as a way to diversify its international relations and lessen its dependence on the US. 'Abdul-Mahdi, a former finance minister, is a weighty figure in Iraqi politics. Within his Shi'ite political party's leadership, he has moderated SIIC's alliance with Iran and helped the ailing SIIC leader, 'Abdul-'Aziz al-Hakim, deepen his links with the KRG in Erbil.

The French petroleum giant Total seems to have gained a head-start over other IOCs in its efforts to play a major role in development of Iraq's vast oil and gas reserves. It is negotiating some major concessions. A French company has signed a contract with the Municipality of Baghdad for a water purification scheme worth nearly $1 bn. A French consulting firm is designing a system to secure Iraq's borders. Its implementation is said to be worth another $1 bn. Eurocopter is to sell Iraq 24 helicopters for $500m. These are only among the first of many such contracts under negotiation.

'Abdul-Mahdi, a rival as well as a political partner of Maleki, has a vision of Iraq moving firmly on the way to national reconciliation and revival, a country which has, to a large extent, reduced the bitter sectarian divide of recent years. He told a conference in Paris that, thanks to the 2007 surge in US troops and the work of the ACs, the Maleki government defeated the Neo-Salafi insurgency. Of course, the recent violence has been a major setback for the government.

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