PARIS, Aug 27: French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner apologised on Monday for saying that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki should stand down, a week after his high-profile trip to Baghdad.

Maliki on Sunday demanded an official apology after Kouchner said in an interview to the US magazine Newsweek that the embattled Shia prime minister had to go.

“If the prime minister wants me to excuse myself for having interfered in Iraqi affairs in such a direct way, then I do so willingly,” Kouchner told French radio RTL.

“I believe that he (Maliki) did not understand, or that I did not stress enough that these had been remarks that I had heard from my Iraqi interlocutors,” Kouchner said.

Kouchner’s trip to Baghdad signalled France’s readiness under new President Nicolas Sarkozy to become engaged in Iraq after Paris and Washington bitterly fell out over the US invasion in March 2003.

A humanitarian who founded the relief group Medecins Sans Frontieres, Kouchner has received full backing from Sarkozy who on Monday called for a clear timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq in a major foreign policy address.—AFP