Angelina Jolie visits Baghdad
BAGHDAD (AP) - February 7, 2008 The actress said there needs to be a more coherent plan as the
more than 2 million internally displaced Iraqis begin to trickle
back to their homes amid a recent lull in violence that had
threatened to spark a civil war in the country.
"There's lots of goodwill and lots of discussion, but there
seems to be just a lot of talk at the moment," Jolie said in
excerpts of an interview aired on CNN.
"What happens in Iraq and how Iraq settles in the years to come
is going to affect the entire Middle East," she added. "And a big
part of what it's going to affect, how it settles, is how these
people are returned and settled into their homes and their
community and brought back together and whether they can live
together and what their communities look like."
Jolie's itinerary included meetings with the top U.S. commander
in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
and Iraqi migration officials during her visit, according to the
American Embassy.
AP Television News footage also showed the Academy Award-winning
actress mingling with American troops during lunch at a dining
facility in the heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the
embassy and Iraqi government offices in central Baghdad.