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PARIS — The French have always found American elections amusing, in a horror movie sort of way. They grumpily regard the American president as in some unfortunate sense also their own, but they see the campaign through their own cultural lens.They value sophistication above almost anything, and so they regard their own hyperactive president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with his messy romantic life and model-singer wife, as “Sarko the American.”But this year has been difficult for the French. Mr. Sarkozy has generally supported American foreign policy and has praised the United States’ openness and entrepreneurial verve. And the sudden emergence of Senator...

Europe rescues more banks as U.S. rejects bailout By Tony Munroe and Jason Neely 2 hours, 1 minute ago Bank rescues spread in Europe on Tuesday after U.S. lawmakers' unexpected rejection of a $700 billion bailout. France joined Belgium and Luxembourg in a 6. French President Nicolas Sarkozy began talks on the crisis with finance executives on Tuesday and has said he will meet this week with officials from Europe's G8 member states -- Germany, France, Britain and Italy. "Market meltdown is likely to continue unless an alternative (U.S.) plan is passed, which may or may not happen this week,"...

French cruller Carla Bruni was one sweet sight everywhere she went in Manhattan yesterday. The sexy model-turned-singer first performed her duties as France's first lady by attending meetings at the United Nations with her president hubby, Nicolas Sarkozy. She then left the world leaders to catch up on current events, and enjoyed entertaining reading with the New York Post tucked under her arm. After returning to her Upper East Side hotel for a quick rest and outfit change out of a demure, pinstriped skirt suit, she reappeared in the evening looking ready to turn plenty of heads. One of the...

CARLA 'KOZY IN NYC BIG APPLE SAYS BIENVENUE Foxy French First Lady Carla Bruni was the belle of the Big Apple yesterday. The stunning ex-model, in New York with president hubby Nicolas Sarkozy for the opening session of the UN General Assembly, hit the town running - as the couple went for a morning jog through Midtown. Bruni turned heads in a skintight sports top that bared her washboard belly as the seemingly winded president struggled to keep up in an oversized soccer jersey that covered a pair of way-too-short shorts. A few hours later, Bruni looked no worse for...

President Sarkozy of France would refuse to shake the hand of the Iranian president, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, the French leader told reporters today at the United Nations. At a press conference shortly after delivering a speech at the opening debate of the U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Sarkozy added that President al-Assad of Syria could be used to exert a positive influence on Iran.

Those behind market crisis should be punished: Sarkozy 1 hour, 39 minutes ago Those responsible for the crisis that has swept global financial markets should be punished, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said overnight in his first reaction to the latest bout of economic turmoil. In an acceptance speech at an award ceremony attended by U.S. and French business leaders, Sarkozy called for the "truth" on the crisis to be uncovered. "Today, millions of people across the world fear for their savings, for their apartment, for the funds they have put in banks. It is our duty to give them clear...

The "secret" file quoted by a Canadian newspaper said that the French troops ambushed on Aug 18 in a valley east of Kabul did not have enough bullets, radios and other equipment to sustain them through two days of fighting. The report is likely to fan tensions ahead of a French parliamentary debate over President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to send extra troops to Afghanistan. It promises to be heated, but Mr Sarkozy's decision will be approved as his ruling centre-right UMP party holds a strong majority.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a champion judoka, could soon be flooring France's Nicolas Sarkozy with some of his famous throws after agreeing to pass on some of his black belt skills to the French president. "He (Sarkozy) is interested in martial arts and we have decided to do some training together," Putin was quoted as saying in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro published on Saturday.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said when he visited Damascus earlier this month that he does not see Hizballah as a terrorist organization, and in fact supports its fight against Israel, according to a Lebanese newspaper. During his time in the Syrian capital, Sarkozy sat down with Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Akhbar, which quoted the French leader as saying that Paris “does not view Hizballah as a terror organization, rather it appreciates its opposition to occupation, as France has faced a similar experience in the past.”

Vladimir Putin to Teach Nicolas Sarkozy Judo Saturday, September 13, 2008 Rivals for sexiest statesman status, Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Sarkozy may soon fight it out tete-a-tete. The black-belt Russian prime minister agreed to show the French president his martial arts moves, Putin told the French newspaper Le Figaro. The former Russian president, a champion judoka, said Sarkozy "is interested in martial arts and we have decided to do some training together," according to Reuters.

Pope Benedict XVI condemned unbridled "pagan" passion for power, possessions and money as a modern-day plague on Saturday, as he led more than a quarter million Catholics at an outdoor Mass in Paris. Benedict was making his first visit as pontiff to the French capital, renowned for its luxury goods, fashion sense and cultural riches. "Has not our modern world created its own idols?" Benedict said in his homily, and wondered aloud whether people have "imitated, perhaps inadvertently, the pagans of antiquity?" "This is a question that all people, if they are honest with themselves, cannot help but ask," the...

PARIS (Reuters) - Pope Benedict began a four-day visit to France on Friday with a plea to the French to keep God in their lives and let religion help create a better world. Meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysee Palace in central Paris, the German-born pontiff praised France both for the deep Christian roots of its culture and the "serene and positive dialogue" between faith and power. Sarkozy, who has broken a political taboo by speaking openly and positively about the role of religion in society, said it would be "a folly" for France to ignore its long...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said today he saw “no sign” in his talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Moscow wanted to shift the borders of neighbouring Ukraine. Russia's victory in the brief war with Georgia last month, which followed a Georgian attempt to take back the rebellious pro-Moscow region of South Ossetia, has raised fears Russia could do the same in other neighbouring, former Soviet states. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said last month that Russia might have its sights on Ukraine or Moldova. But Mr Sarkozy said he had no sign in talks with Russia on withdrawing troops...

HUMILIATION avoided, but hardly a triumph: that is the upshot of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s talks in Moscow on Monday September 9th, where he tried to get the Kremlin to implement in full a French-brokered ceasefire that ended Russia’s war with Georgia. After sometimes stormy talks, Mr Sarkozy, accompanied by the European Union’s nominal foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, and the EU commission’s president, José Manuel Barroso, gained agreement on the withdrawal of Russian troops from a buffer zone established around the two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia (but so far almost nobody else) has recognised both places as...

Russia has conditionally agreed to remove its forces from Georgian land - excluding Abkhazia and South Ossetia - by the second week of October. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the pull-out would happen once 200 EU monitors deployed to South Ossetia. Speaking after meeting French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr Medvedev said the withdrawal was dependent on guarantees that Georgia would not use force again. But he made no mention of withdrawing troops from South Ossetia or Abkhazia. And he defended Russia's controversial decision to recognise the independence of both breakaway regions, saying the move was "irrevocable". Criticism of US Among...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been holding talks in Moscow with the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about the crisis in Georgia. He is joined by the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and the European Commission head, Jose Manuel Barroso. Mr Sarkozy was pressing Russia to meet the terms of the ceasefire agreement and withdraw its troops from Georgia. Russia says the deal allows it to keep peacekeepers in several buffer zones around two breakaway Georgian regions. Ahead of the talks, Mr Sarkozy said the EU was "united" in its position, adding that "we will defend our convictions forcefully". France...

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, warned Iran on Thursday that it was taking a big risk by seeking to obtain a military nuclear capability, saying that one day it could find Israel had decided to attack. In one of the most explicit warnings to Tehran by a western leader, Mr Sarkozy said: “One day, whatever the Israeli government, we could find one morning that Israel has struck. “The question is not whether it would be legitimate, whether it would be intelligent. What will we do at that moment? It would be a catastrophe. We must avoid that catastrophe.” Iran insists...

Let's assume that John McCain is not crazy, and that he wants to show America he will steer a different course in foreign policy than George Bush's, while remaining faithful to his party's values and traditions. How does he do that? How can he present himself as both a change agent and a force of continuity? There's an interesting model for McCain here in France, in the remarkable realignment that President Nicolas Sarkozy has accomplished in foreign policy over the past year. Youthful and energetic, and accompanied by his celebrity wife, Sarkozy might seem closer in style to Barack Obama....

Responding to new concerns about the French military presence in Afghanistan after the deaths of 10 soldiers there in a Taliban ambush, Prime Minister François Fillon said on Friday that he would support a parliamentary vote in September on the troop deployment in line with recent constitutional changes. Parliament, which is dominated by the conservative party of President Sarkozy and M. Fillon, is expected to approve the continued involvement of French troops. But the vote is a gesture to public concern. It would take place after a parliamentary debate on Afghanistan beginning Sept. 22. The vote would take place under...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday pledged to continue the fight in Afghanistan while attending a state funeral in Paris for the 10 French soldiers killed in a Taliban ambush earlier in the week. Sarkozy, who was accompanied by other French leaders at the funeral ceremony in a church at Les Invalides, said France will not give up its fight against terrorism in Afghanistan "We don't have the right to lose over there, we cannot renounce our values," he said. "We cannot let the barbarians triumph because a defeat at the other side of the world will be paid for...

An emotional President Sarkozy insisted yesterday that there would be no French wobble over Afghanistan, urging troops in Kabul to fight with fresh resolve after the loss of ten comrades. Mr Sarkozy, pale and shaken after inspecting the coffins of the young French servicemen, voiced his defiance after the wisdom of his decision to send more troops into what is widely seen as an unwinnable war was called into question. François Hollande, the Socialist Party leader, said that France “must be told what exactly our soldiers are doing in Afghanistan and how long they will be doing it for”. Survivors...

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy shakes hands with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace in Kabul August 20, 2008. President Sarkozy said on Wednesday he had no regrets about sending 700 more troops to Afghanistan, after insurgents killed 10 French soldiers, the biggest single loss for foreign forces in combat since 2001. REUTERS/Olivier Laban-Mattei/Pool (AFGHANISTAN)

<p>President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday he had no regrets about sending 700 more troops to Afghanistan, after insurgents killed 10 French soldiers, the biggest single loss for foreign forces in combat since 2001.</p> <p>The troops were killed in a major battle that erupted when Taliban insurgents ambushed a French patrol just 60 km (40 miles) east of the Afghan capital on Monday. The fighting has heightened fears the militants are gradually closing in on Kabul itself.</p>

President Nicolas Sarkozy has arrived in Afghanistan to support French troops a day after one of the deadliest attacks on France's forces abroad. Ten French soldiers were killed and 21 injured in an ambush by Taleban fighters east of the capital, Kabul. Mr Sarkozy said France was committed to the fight against terrorism, and the mission in Afghanistan would continue.

(PARIS) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a newspaper article to appear Monday, called for the withdrawal "without delay" of Russian military forces from Georgia, adding: "This point is not negotiable." Writing in Le Figaro, Sarkozy -- who heads the French presidency of the European Union -- said he would convene a special EU summit if Russia fails to pull back all its forces that entered Georgia from August 7. "This withdrawal must be carried out without delay," said Sarkozy, who brokered a ceasefire deal between Moscow and Tbilisi in the midst of conflict last week. "This point is not...

GORI, Georgia (Reuters) - Russia announced to the West it would begin withdrawing forces from Georgia on Monday after a war that dealt a humiliating blow to the Black Sea state and raised fears for energy supplies to Europe. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Sunday that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had told him by telephone that forces would begin leaving around midday on Monday. Sarkozy, representing the European Union, said failure to pull out under a ceasefire deal would have "serious consequences" for ties with the EU. Sunday saw no evidence of fighting, but Russian troops continued to man...

Russia has approved a plan intended to end fighting with Georgia, brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr Sarkozy, whose country holds the EU presidency, is now in Tbilisi trying to persuade Georgians to accept the deal. Under the plan, both sides would agree not to use force, and all troops would return to the positions they were in before the conflict began last week. Earlier, Russia announced its military activity in the area was completed and witnesses reported troops pulling back. But despite the diplomacy and apparent withdrawal, rhetoric on both sides has remained fiery and analysts predicted a...

France sought Wednesday to unite the 26 other nations in the European Union behind the accord brokered with Russia to end the war in Georgia, urging that monitors be dispatched to the Caucasus to help uphold the truce between Georgian and Russian forces. The sudden eruption of war in Georgia last week bared divisions within Europe over a resurgent Russia and Georgia’s pursuit of NATO membership. Georgia has cast itself as engaged in a lonely struggle to maintain democracy in Russia’s backyard. The ministers appeared to be edging closer to an agreement on sending peacekeepers to the Georgian separatist region...

"Once again, the Europeans, and their friends in the pusillanimous wing of the US Left, have demonstrated that, when it come to those postmodern Olympian sports of synchronized self-loathing, team hand-wringing and lightweight posturing, they know how to sweep gold, silver and bronze."

Russia has ordered an incursion into a frontline Georgian town in defiance of the terms of an overnight peace deal brokered by French president Nicolas Sarkozy. As the EU announced plans to send peacekeeping troops to monitor the ceasefire, Russian troops destroyed an empty Georgian military base in Gori and set up a checkpoint on the road to Tbilisi. In clear defiance of the spirit of Mr Sarkozy's peace deal, Russia appeared to be working to cement a buffer zone for South Ossetia. A Georgian official claimed that 50 tanks had moved into Gori and South Ossetian snipers were also...

MOSCOW: Georgia and Russia agreed in principle to an EU-brokered peace plan over South Ossetia on Wednesday as the U.S. showed disapproval of Moscow's attacks on its neighbour by cancelling a joint naval exercise. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili agreed late on Tuesday to a modified version of a six-point peace plan endorsed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "It is a political document. It 'is an agreement of principles...and I think we have full coincidence of principles," Saakashvili told a joint news conference with Sarkozy. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Moscow's military operations...

A victorious Kremlin agreed to a ceasefire in the Caucasus last night on terms that left Georgia and its Western backers weakened. After five days of fighting, President Medvedev of Russia ordered his troops in South Ossetia to hold their fire and fixed a six-point peace plan with President Sarkozy of France. The deal, confirmed by Georgia’s President Saakashvili last night, did not address the future of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakway provinces that want closer links with Russia.

TBILISI, Georgia - Georgia's president said early Wednesday that he agreed to the "general principals" [sic] of a plan for ending fighting with Russian troops in his country. The cease-fire plan brokered by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France calls for both Russian and Georgian troops to return to their positions before fighting erupted around the breakaway province of South Ossetia last week.

The National Front, the French anti-immigration party, is selling its historic headquarters to a Chinese university to raise cash, the party’s leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, left, was quoted on Monday as saying. Mr. Le Pen, whose slogan in several presidential campaigns was “Keep France for the French,” confounded predictions by reaching the runoff in the 2002 presidential election. But stinging defeats in last year’s parliamentary vote have left the party deep in the red. The magazine L’Express said on its Web site that Mr. Le Pen believed that the university, which he did not name, wanted to turn the building,...

MOSCOW (AFP)--French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday it was "normal" for Moscow to defend Russian-speaking people beyond its borders, but added that Georgia's territorial integrity had to be respected. "It's perfectly normal that Russia would want to defend the interests both of Russians in Russia and Russian speakers outside Russia," Sarkozy said.

FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy will visit Moscow early in the coming week for talks with Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev over the fighting in Georgia, the Kremlin and the Elysee said today. Mr Medvedev and Mr Sarkozy, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, held a telephone conversation in which they "agreed to continue discussions in Moscow", the Kremlin press service said, quoted by Interfax. The French president's office said Mr Sarkozy would visit Moscow "in the coming days" to confer with Mr Medvedev. Mr Sarkozy said today there was hope of quickly ending the conflict between Russia and Georgia over...

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who will attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics despite domestic criticism, announced Thursday that he would not meet the Dalai Lama later this month in France. Instead, Mr. Sarkozy’s office said, his wife, Carla, would meet with the Dalai Lama, taking part in a religious ceremony to open a Buddhist temple in southern France on Aug. 22. Mr. Sarkozy’s political party, however, said the president would meet with him before the end of the year. France holds the presidency of the European Union, and Mr. Sarkozy is representing Europe in Beijing as well....

Deep in the muggy Parisian summer, when it seems the only people left in the city are tourists and those who serve them, there is a fine little scandal involving the president’s son, his wealthy fiancée, a much-beloved and scabrous magazine, a crusty cartoonist and humid charges of racism and anti-Semitism. Like all French intellectual fusses, this one has roots in the past — as far back as the Dreyfus affair, not to mention Algeria. But it also touches directly on the reputation and power of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and his efforts to intimidate the press. The result...

PARIS It’s not quite the Dreyfus Affair, at least not yet. But France is divided again over power and the Jews. While the United States has been debating The New Yorker’s caricature of Barack Obama as a Muslim, France has gone off the deep end over a brief item in the country’s leading satirical magazine portraying the relationship between President Nicolas Sarkozy’s fast-rising son, Jean, and his Jewish fiancée. The offending piece in Charlie Hebdo, a pillar of the left-libertarian media establishment, was penned last month by a 79-year-old columnist-cartoonist who goes by the name of Bob Siné. He described...

He has been nicknamed 'President Bling Bling', but Nicolas Sarkozy left his usual flashy style at home yesterday as he worked up a sweat on the beach. After a busy year the French president could have been forgiven for taking the rare chance to relax. But instead he has spent the last few days unwinding with an energetic timetable of cycling, swimming and jogging in the south of France. Today he again shunned idly sunbathing to join tourists on the sand at Cavalaire-sur-Mer. Bikini-clad sunbathers watched with interest as the 53-year-old and his companions jogged at a fast pace along...

Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died near Moscow at the age of 89. The author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, who returned to Russia in 1994, died of either a stroke or heart failure..... Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences to the writer's family, a Kremlin spokesperson said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy described as "one of the greatest consciences of 20th Century Russia." "His intransigence, his ideals and his long, eventful life make of Solzhenitsyn a storybook...

Just when everyone thought he was a ‘Page 3 president', the French leader is slaying sacred cows. At the core of Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign to be President of France last year was one strikingly counter-intuitive hunch. Conventional wisdom, across the French political spectrum, held that the country was so allergic to reform that to promise or attempt it was political suicide. Quite the contrary, Sarkozy retorted: if only politicians could come up with and - importantly - take the trouble to explain credible ways to modernise France, they would find

"Nicolas Sarkozy's advisors received only one demand from the team of the Democratic candidate: no American flag for the press conference, because it's a candidate being received, not the president of the United States."

As he prepared to meet US presidential candidate Barack Obama later Friday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told a French newspaper that the Illinois senator was his "buddy." "Obama? That's my buddy," Sarkozy was quoted as saying in Friday's edition of Le Figaro. "Contrary to my diplomatic advisors, I never thought Hillary Clinton had a chance. I always said Obama would be chosen" as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. "I am the only French person who knows him," Sarkozy said, recounting that he had met Obama during a visit to the United States in 2006, when he was Interior...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is offering Obama a warm welcome on the day of their meeting, in an interview with the conservative daily Le Figaro. "Obama? He's my pal," the president told Le Figaro. "Unlike my diplomatic advisers, I never believed in Hillary Clinton's chances. I always said that Obama would be nominated."Sarkozy added that an Obama victory "would validate" his strategy of reconcilation with the United States. His embrace of the United States has made him American conservatives' favorite Continental politician, but he doesn't seem to be reciprocating. Meanwhile, the French press appears to be welcoming Obama Friday with...

Barack Obama met in Paris Friday with the pro-US President Nicolas Sarkozy on a world tour aimed at burnishing the White House hopeful's foreign policy credentials ahead of November elections. His plane, bearing the slogan "Change we can believe in," landed at Le Bourget airport and the Democrat then headed into Paris to be greeted on the steps of the Elysee palace by a smiling Sarkozy. "Bonjour," said Obama, after he was urged by journalists to say something in French and to pose for more handshakes with the French rightwing leader. He was due to give a joint press conference...

As Barack Obama launches into a European tour – presumably because the USA alone can’t comprise the “57 states” he said he visited on his campaign - one has to wonder whether citizens of the three countries he’s visiting – Germany, France and England – have any idea what they’re dealing with. But why would they, right? I mean, America sure doesn’t seem to have a clue. While the Democratic-led congress hits a record low 9% approval rating despite high pre-election hopes, the even further left-leaning embodiment of that epic failure is now shuffling around the globe, sending crowds into...

US presidential hopeful Barack Obama was due in Paris on Friday to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy during a fleeting and low-key visit in stark contrast to his crowd-pulling trip to Berlin the day before. Obama's aides did not detail his agenda, but the Illinois senator was expected to land at Le Bourget airport and head into Paris solely for the Sarkozy meeting before leaving for London soon afterwards. "Senator Obama looks forward to meeting with President Sarkozy and discussing areas of mutual interest, including the common challenges of security, transnational threats, and the global economy," his national security spokeswoman Wendy...

As Barack Obama launches into a European tour -- presumably because the USA alone can’t comprise the “57 states” he said he visited on his campaign -- one has to wonder whether citizens of the three countries he’s visiting -- Germany, France and England -- have any idea what they’re dealing with. But why would they, right? I mean, America sure doesn’t seem to have a clue. While the Democratic-led congress hits a record low 9% approval rating despite high pre-election hopes, the even further left-leaning embodiment of that epic failure is now shuffling around the globe, sending crowds into...

when the sweeping changes that he insists will curb his powers and reinvigorate parliament were passed by a single vote Deputies and senators from both houses of parliament gasped when the outcome was announced at the gilded chateau of Versailles, with 539 votes for and 357 against the constitutional bill, which required a three-fifths majority to go through. Only one opposition Socialist voted in favour of the reform - the former culture minister, Jacques Lang, whose support proved decisive. Mr Sarkozy said he was "delighted" by the vote. "It is democracy that has won," said the President on his way...