France stands alongside the Kurdish government to preserve security and stability: Macron

"I expressed my full support and solidarity to the Kurdish government."

Wladimir van Wilgenburg 2024/02/01 23:07

France's President Emmanuel Macron gestures as he addresses the audience during a press conference as part of a European Council meeting at the European headquarters in Brussels, Feb. 1, 2024. (Ludovic Marin/AFP)

Kurdistan France KRG Emmanuel Macron Kurdistan Region

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday told Kurdistan 24’s Barzan Hassan that his country stands alongside the Kurdistan Regional Government to preserve security and stability, after Iran’s Jan. 15 missile attack.

“From the very beginning first, vis-à-vis the Iraqi government and Kurdistan, we had a very clear message and I expressed my full support and solidarity to the Kurdish government in such a context,” he said.

“And so we expressed very clearly our solidarity, the fact that we have existing bases and we maintain this presence, and we will clearly be alongside the Kurdish government to preserve the security and your safety,” he added.

Moreover, French President Emmanuel Macron said that France passed a clear message to Teheran not to escalate or join the war in Gaza that has been going on since October.

“We passed a very clear message to Iran not to escalate, not to join the situation in this war and neither directly nor for proxies to increase the tension and cause any deterioration in the situation which includes Houthi, Hezbollah, Shia militias and this is the message I want here to reiterate.”

“This is the message I passed to the prime minister of Kurdistan and the message passed as well to the Iraqi authorities,” he added. “We are present, we are here to fight against the terrorism.”

“We need a clear commitment from the regional and the national government to clearly fight against precisely these militias and any terrorist activities.”

As a part of the US-led coalition against ISIS, France has provided the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga forces with training as well as air support to Peshmerga forces in the war against ISIS.

France has also played an important role in diplomatically supporting the Kurds. For instance, in 2017, France played a critical role in dismantling the diplomatic blockade imposed on the Kurdistan Region following its independence referendum in September 2017 by inviting the then Prime Minister, Nechirvan Barzani, with the aim of mitigating tensions between Baghdad and Erbil.