Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, was in Paris on Friday for talks with his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, who recently visited Baghdad. The meeting was being held a day after US President George W. Bush ordered gradual reductions in US forces in Iraq, saying: "The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home." Bush said 5,700 US forces would be home by late December, and that four brigades - for a total of at least 21,500 troops - would return by July, along with an undetermined number of support forces. Now at its highest level of the war, the US troop strength stands at 168,000.