French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called on Europe on Tuesday to play a bigger role in Iraq because "the Americans will not be able to get this country out of difficulty alone".

"Europe must play a role ... and I hope that other foreign ministers will come and visit Iraq," Kouchner told France's RTL Radio in an interview from Baghdad. He did not say what that role should be.

Kouchner is the first French minister to visit Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. France, then under President Jacques Chirac, strongly opposed it and angered President George W. Bush by refusing to join his "Coalition of the Willing".

Chirac's successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, has since sought to improve ties with Bush, and Kouchner's visit is seen as a symbolic sign of the new French policy on Iraq.

Kouchner said after three days of talks with Iraq's leaders, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani, it was clear there was a lack of trust between the different groups.

"I felt that there is a lack of trust among the different groups and leaders. Maybe the trust between the people is more than that," Kouchner told reporters through an Arabic translator after talks with Sunni Arab Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi and Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, a Kurd.

Iraq's national unity government is paralysed by infighting, with political blocs representing the country's majority Shi'ite Muslims and minority Sunni Arab and Kurdish communities reluctant to compromise to reach a proper power-sharing deal.

The slow political progress towards national reconciliation has frustrated Washington. Washington says it has deployed 30,000 extra troops in the country to give Iraq's political leaders time to reach a political accommodation and reconcile the warring sides.


FAMILY SLAIN

The political crisis is playing out against a backdrop of continued sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions since the bombing of a revered Shi'ite shrine in the town of Samarra in February 2006.

Police said gunmen killed seven members of the same family in the town of Latifiya in the notorious "Triangle of Death", a Sunni Arab militant stronghold south of Baghdad. Two police sources said three women and a girl were among the dead, but it was not clear to which religious sect the family belonged.

"Everyone knows the Americans will not be able to get this country out of difficulty alone. And so, I have said it and I will say it again, the more the Iraqis request the intervention of the U.N. the more France will help them," Kouchner told RTL.

France opposed military intervention in Iraq in 2003 on the grounds that U.N. inspectors should be given more time to find weapons of mass destruction, the main reason given by Washington for the invasion. No such weapons have ever been found.

The United Nations Security Council voted earlier this month to give the United Nations an expanded political role in Iraq to promote dialogue between rival factions and dialogue with neighbouring countries.

Maliki is on a three-day visit to Damascus to convince Syria to stop what Baghdad sees as support for rebels fighting his U.S.-backed government. Syria has said it is difficult to police its porous border with Iraq.

Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said Iraq was interested in reactivating a pipeline linking its oil centre of Kirkuk to a Syrian port only if it could be secured.

An Iraqi official said improved economic ties could help convince Damascus to help the Baghdad government improve security.

Syria shares part of its Iraq border with Anbar province, a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold that has been largely pacified since tribal sheikhs turned against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and entered into an alliance with U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Abu Risha, the leader of one confederation of Sunni Arab tribes opposed to al Qaeda, met Iraq's defence minister, Abdel Qader Jassim, on Tuesday to ask for his help in recruiting his tribesmen into the Iraqi army.

Jassim's office said in a statement the minister had ordered his ministry to facilitate this process.