Angelina Jolie meets troops in Iraq - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Angelina Jolie meets troops in Iraq

BAGHDAD — Angelina Jolie brought her star power to Baghdad on Thursday on a mission as a U.N. goodwill ambassador to highlight the plight of Iraqi refugees.

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.