A Humanitarian-in-Chief.(French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner )(Interview)

Byline: Bernard Kouchner

When French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner paid a three-day visit to Iraq last week, it seemed a potent symbol of the shift in France's policies since President Nicolas Sarkozy took office in May. The previous government in Paris had bitterly opposed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But Kouchner, a passionate activist who first gained fame as a founder of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in the 1970s, also has a personal stake in the future of Iraq. In an exclusive interview with NEWSWEEK's Christopher Dickey, Kouchner argues that no government can stand aloof from what is happening there now, although no one should be deluded about the disaster it has become. Excerpts:

DICKEY: The last time we interviewed you was in Kosovo in 1999, when you were the United Nations representative in Pristina and Nadia Younes was one of your colleagues. She went on to work for Sergio Vieira de Mello, who headed the United Nations Mission in Baghdad--until they and 20 others were killed by a truck bomb in 2003.

KOUCHNER: I went to lay a wreath in Baghdad for them. My counterpart, the Iraqi minister of Foreign Affairs, was there and he laid a wreath as well. No Iraqi official had ever before made an appearance in front of the monument that's there. Never.

Never? Why?

They don't care about the U.N. For them, these are political matters, and political matters are a history of settling scores among the big families and the big parties [of Iraq]. They've had 6,000 years of violence. So, finally, the daily death toll in Baghdad and in the country doesn't interest them so much. And if you don't understand that, you don't understand anything. That's one of the mistakes the Americans made. They understood nothing about what has happened in this country over such a long period of time.

You've had a lot of contact with Kurdish leaders in the past. Do they surprise you now?