France will help reconstruction and reconciliation efforts in Iraq as it emerges from the war against Islamic State, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Saturday after talks with Iraqi officials in Baghdad, reports CNBC.
France is a main partner in the U.S.-led coalition helping Baghdad fight the militants who seized parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The coalition provided key air and ground support to Iraqi forces in the nine-month campaign to take back Mosul, Islamic State's capital in Iraq.
The city's fall in July effectively marked the end of the "caliphate" declared by Islamic State's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over parts of Iraq and Syria. Iraqi forces were close to taking back full control of IS's northwestern stronghold of Tal Afar on Saturday.
"We are present in the war and we will be present in the peace," Le Drian told a news conference in Baghdad with French defence minister Florence Parly and Iraqi foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
"Even if our joint combat against Daesh is not finished, it is entering a phase of stabilisation, of reconciliation, of reconstruction, a phase of peace," Le Drian said, calling Islamic State by its Arabic acronym.
During the talks, Iraqi prime minister Hayder al-Abadi urged France to invest in Iraq, "at the economic, commercial and investment levels," according to a statement from his office.
France will give a 430 million euro ($513 million) loan to Iraq before the end of the year, a French diplomatic source said.