PARIS - French President Jacques Chirac, one of the fiercest opponents of the US-led war in Iraq, warned on Friday that the conflict has provided a dangerous new breeding ground for terrorism.
“As France had foreseen and feared, the war in Iraq has sparked upheavals that have yet to show their full effects,” Chirac said in a traditional New Year’s address to the French diplomatic corps.
“It offered terrorism a new field for expansion,” he said, in a broadside against a conflict which Washington still describes as part of the “war on terror” launched in 2001 following the September 11 attacks.
He said the war had “exacerbated the divisions between communities and threatened the very integrity of Iraq.”
“It undermined the stability of the entire region, where every country now fears for its security and its independence.”
“The priority, more than ever, is to restore full sovereignty to the Iraqi people,” Chirac told the assembly.
US President George W. Bush is due next week to announce a major overhaul in Washington’s strategy in Iraq, which is prey to raging sectarian bloodshed more than three years after the US invasion
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