France lifts veto threat on Iraq

[hussar]

France will not veto a US-backed Security Council resolution on the future of Iraq, President Jacques Chirac has said.

The United States circulated a draft text for a resolution earlier this month but it has not yet been put to a vote.

"I have no intention of opposing the resolution... I am not in that mind-set at all," the French leader told the New York Times newspaper in an interview published on Monday.

Paris had earlier criticised Washington's efforts to get United Nations backing for an multinational occupation force, demanding instead a more rapid transfer of power from the coalition forces to an Iraqi Government.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3127798.stm