Downing Street Says » President Chirac’s Visit

» Thursday, November 18, 2004

President Chirac’s Visit

The Prime Minister’s spokesman (PMS) told journalists that President Chirac was in the UK today and tomorrow at the invitation of The Queen for what had been designated a Special Visit to mark the end of the Entente Cordiale Centenary celebrations.

As part of the visit, the Prime Minister and President Chirac were today holding the annual bilateral UK/France Summit. Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon, Margaret Beckett, Hilary Benn, Alan Johnson and Dennis MacShane would also be meeting their French counterparts.

President Chirac and the Duke of Edinburgh had inspected a Guard of honour at the Foreign Office. President Chirac and the Prime Minister would be holding talks in Downing Street before going to Lancaster House for further talks over lunch, and they would have a press conference.

The PMS said that talks were expected to cover the situation in Iraq, especially preparations for elections, but much more than just Iraq. They would discuss the Middle East Peace Process, our G8 priorities, particularly Africa and climate change, EU issues and defence co-operation.

Although people had focused on our well-publicised difference of views about military action in Iraq, it would be clear from the talks and the communiqué that both countries were working very closely together on a very broad range of issues and wanted to look forwards.

We both saw achieving a peaceful two-state solution between Israel and Palestine as a top priority. Obviously, the upcoming Palestinian elections would be an important opportunity to move this process forwards.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.