WASHINGTON (AFP) - Attorney General John Ashcroft will next week become the first top US cabinet member to visit France since the Iraq war caused a major split between the two allies.
With no sign of relations healing, Iraq is ironically one of the reasons for Ashcroft's visit from May 4-8.
He will attend a Group of Eight meeting of justice ministers in Paris on Monday and then go Tuesday to a two-day conference on antiquities stolen during the Iraq war, to be held at the Interpol headquarters in Lyon.
The Interpol conference is aimed at developing a common strategy to recover the cultural wealth pillaged from Saddam Hussein's regime as it collapsed last month.
Many of the estimated 200,000 pieces in the Baghdad Museum, most from ancient Mesopotamia, were pilfered by organised gangs in the chaos just after US troops entered Baghdad on April 9.
Presidents George W. Bush of the United States and Jacques Chirac of France fell out over French opposition to a UN Security Council resolution authorising military force against Iraq.
Chirac vowed to veto any UN resolution, inflaming anti-French sentiment in the United States.
Top US officials met at the White House to decide how to respond to the French moves, which prompted public calls for a boycott of French wine and leading US lawmakers to rename "French fries" as "Freedom fries".
Bush's Air Force One jet served "Freedom Toast" instead of "French toast."
Bush indicated in a recent television interview that his anger at Chirac was not easing.
"I doubt he'll be coming to the ranch any time soon," Bush said in a reference to his "Prairie Chapel" property in Texas to which only a handful of world leaders have been invited.
"There are some strains in the relationship, obviously, because it appeared to some in our administration and our country that the French position was anti-American," the US leader said.
"Hopefully, the past tensions will subside and the French won't be using their position within Europe to create alliances against the United States, or Britain or Spain or any of the new countries that are the new democracies in Europe," he added.
Bush will go to France in June for a summit of the Group of Eight industrial powers -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The meeting will be held at the French spa resort of Evian, which is near the Swiss border. The White House has dismissed rumours, however, that Bush might snub Chirac by spending the night in Switzerland.
"The president will be overnighting in France. There were never plans for him to overnight anywhere else," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
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