Alliot-Marie, who is due to travel to Washington on Thursday, is expected to discuss "bilateral defence relations" with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, defence ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said.

She will later fly to New York for a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Relations between France and the US have been at rock-bottom since France refused to support the US war to topple former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Last week French President Jacques Chirac continued to underline the gulf separating the two in foreign policy when he reaffirmed France's vision of a multipolar world and pointed to the risks of the occupation of Iraq.

One of Rumsfeld's senior advisors, Richard Perle, recommended in a book just published that US military ties to France should be limited and that Washington should seek to isolate Paris in Europe.

Bureau said discussions between the officials would be wide-ranging and that they would include the Iraq, although he declined to be more specific.

Other issues on the agenda were joint action in Afghanistan and reform of NATO, Bureau said.

Alliot-Marie is scheduled to meet Annan on Friday afternoon and the two are likely to talk about peacekeeping operations in Africa and the possibility of a UN force being sent to troubled Ivory Coast, a former French colony.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

Quick Links
SpaceWar
Search SpaceWar
Subscribe To SpaceWar Express

SpaceWar Search Engine

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SPACEWAR NEWSLETTER SubscribeUnsubscribe