BAGHDAD/PARIS (Dispatches) — French President Emmanuel Macron met Iraqi leaders Wednesday on his first visit to Baghdad where he stressed the war-scarred country must assert its “sovereignty”.
Coming straight from a two-day trip to crisis-hit Lebanon, Macron is the most prominent world leader to visit Iraq since Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi came to power in May.
“Iraq has been going through a challenging time for several years, with war and terrorism” as well as “multiple foreign interventions,” Macron told his Iraqi counterpart Barham Saleh.
President Saleh said he looked forward to a longer visit by Macron in 2021, and Kadhemi said he hoped France and Europe as a whole could help “restore stability” to the rocky region.
France is seeking to expand its economic inroads into Iraq, despite the war-battered country’s problems.
Macron’s lightning visit follows intense talks in Lebanon — his second since a colossal August 4 explosion at Beirut port killed more than 180 people.
Karim Bitar, a political science professor in France and Lebanon, said, “Macron is definitely trying to make a push for a France-facing Middle East.”
His visit to the mainly Muslim region, however, came as the French magazine Charlie Hebdo republished offensive cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon Him) on the eve of the trial of suspects in a deadly attack on the paper’s office five years ago.
In an editorial accompanying the republished cartoons, the paper said, “Reproducing these caricatures this week of the opening of the January 2015 terrorist attacks seemed essential to us. All the reasons that could be opposed to us relate only to political or journalistic cowardice.”

The French weekly has repeatedly provoked Muslim anger by publishing offensive cartoons of their prophet.
The ones reprinted this week were originally published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005, and then republished by Charlie Hebdo in 2006.
The terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo back in January 2015 were French-born brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, who claimed the attacks in the name of Al-Qaeda.
Two days later, a jailhouse acquaintance of theirs, Amedy Coulibaly, stormed a kosher supermarket, killing four hostages. He also killed a young female police officer. The three terrorists were later killed by police.
Macron said on Tuesday it was not his place to pass judgment on the decision by the magazine to republish the cartoons.
“It is never the place of a president of the republic to pass judgment on the editorial choice of a journalist or newsroom, never. Because we have freedom of the press,” he said.