Angelina Jolie goes to Baghdad

Star visits as UN goodwill ambassador

By BRYAN PEARSON

BAGHDAD -- Angelina Jolie was the talk of the town last week -- as, of course, is usual. Except that this time the town was Baghdad, where the rich and famous rarely dare set foot.

When news spread that the star had dropped in to the Iraqi capital as part of her work as a United Nations goodwill ambassador to demand help for people displaced by the war, phones ran red hot and people turned their TVs to CNN, which was running an interview with Jolie recorded soon after she arrived in Baghdad.

While moviehouses have mostly been closed by the sectarian violence that has ravaged Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the availability of satellite channels has made Jolie popular among Iraqis -- even more so since she turned her attention to their beleaguered country.

A scheduled news conference at the U.S. embassy was cancelled, but in the CNN interview, the Oscar-winning actress said she wanted more to be done for Iraqi families driven from their homes.

"There are over 2 million displaced people, and there never seems to be a real coherent plan to help them," she said. "There's lots of goodwill and lots of discussion, but there seems to be a lot of talk at the moment and a lot of pieces that need to be put together."

With more than 4 million Iraqis driven from their homes by the violence -- around half of them right out of the country -- her campaigning for the plight of the displaced struck a deep chord.

The actress said she would urge Iraqi and U.S. officials to provide better security for U.N. refugee agency workers.

Jolie did all the right things -- she had lunch with American troops serving in Iraq after earlier meeting their top commander, Gen. David Petraeus.

She held talks in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone with U.N. head of mission Staffan de Mistura and met a group of internally displaced people.

Iraq's leaders were not deprived of their photo opportunity, either -- after talks with Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and Immigration and Refugees Minister Abdel Samad Rahman Sultan, she called on embattled Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose job is regarded as one of the least desired in the world.

State-run Al-Iraqiya showed a sizable clip from the meeting, which featured a smiling al-Maliki talking engagedly with the Hollywood star.

Watching it, an Iraqi academic quipped, "For the first time ever, I wouldn't mind being al-Maliki."