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U.S. forces are holding three French nationals who were captured in Iraq fighting alongside insurgents loyal to terrorist kingpin Abu Musab al Zarqawi - a development that could complicate attempts to thaw relations between France and America. "I can confirm that we are aware of the existence of these three people of French nationality who are being held in Iraq," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous told a press conference in Paris last week, in comments first reported by Reuters. The French fighters were detained by a U.S. patrol during fighting in the city of Fallujah last November, Ladsous explained....

PARIS -- The ongoing violence in Iraq "encourages terrorism," has created instability and has pushed some French youths toward holy war, France's defense minister said in an interview with The Associated Press. Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie appeared eager to rebuild frayed French-U.S. ties, but expressed deep concern about the insurgency ahead of Sunday's election in Iraq. She pointed to arrests this week of 11 French youths as part of an investigation into a network suspected of dispatching Islamic combatants from France to Iraq. One of the youths was later released. "France cannot be satisfied with the situation in Iraq," she...

PARIS -- The two teenage friends hardly seemed like Islamic radicals. They smoked marijuana, drank beer, listened to rap music, and wore jeans. But the pair of French Muslims died insurgents in Iraq -- one a suicide car bomber, according to relatives who traced the young men's path from the slums of Paris through a religious school in Syria to the fight against the US-led coalition next door. Like many young Muslims in France, Abdelhalim Badjoudj and Redouane el-Hakim did not have jobs, and relatives and friends say they grew more alienated in recent years, surrounded by secular Western culture...

Terrorists battling U.S. troops in places like Fallujah, Mosul and Ramadi include Abu Musab al Zarqawi's mass murderers, holdouts from Saddam's Baathist regime, Iranian sympathizers - and a handful of French nationals. "Authorities estimate that around a dozen Frenchmen of North African or Arab background have traveled to Iraq to join the insurgency," reports the BBC. While the French army has yet to spill a drop of blood in the cause of liberating Iraq, three Frenchmen have been killed in recent months while fighting side-by-side with terrorists against the U.S. Officials told the BBC that the men probably traveled to...

<p>LONDON, England (AP) --Documents discovered in the bombed out headquarters of Iraq's intelligence service provide evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, a newspaper reported Sunday.</p> <p>Papers found Saturday by journalists working for the Sunday Telegraph reveal that an al Qaeda envoy met with officials in Baghdad in March 1998, the newspaper reported.</p>