French, Iraqi FMs to meet in Paris on Thursday

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is hosting on Thursday a meeting here with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari to discuss bilateral and regional issues, official sources said Wednesday. It has been a year since the two men met, when Zebari was last in France to inaugurate the new Iraqi embassy in Paris in July 2012. The French Foreign Ministry said that the two ministers will be addressing "different segments of bilateral relations and the reconstruction and security challenges" facing Iraq, which has been recently witnessing one of the gravest terrorism and insecurity periods for several years. Fabius and Zebari will also be examining together a number of regional files, "notably the repercussions of the Syrian crisis on Iraq and in the region," the Foreign Ministry said.