Oh this is good. You can bet your sweet bippy the media is never going to let the audio of this little exchange ever see the light of day. Nevertheless, we know what was said thanks to Ynetnews. An accidentally open mic at the G20 Summit captured some banter between Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The conversation apparently began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move. The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: “I cannot stand him. He is a liar.” According to the report, Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!” The remark was naturally meant to be said in confidence, but the two leaders’ microphones were accidently left on, making the would-be private comment embarrassingly public.

It’s certainly no secret that Obama doesn’t like Netanyahu or Israel at all. He’s never liked Israel. He’s been a Palestinian sympathizer his entire adult life. Even still, it’s great to hear him say it and for the public to hear him say it. The fact that France will vote in favor of the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN is despicable, but it’s France. They are always on the wrong side of history.

Unfortunately for Obama, the election is fast approaching so he’s gonna have to don a yarmulke and pretend to love the Jews until election day.

This article titled “Street fighting rages in Tripoli as Gaddafi loyalists fight rearguard action” was written by Martin Chulov and Luke Harding in Tripoli and Julian Borger, for The Guardian on Thursday 25th August 2011 00.54 UTC

Street battles are continuing to rage in parts of Tripoli after Muammar Gaddafi vowed to fight to the death and his supporters fought a rearguard campaign using snipers, mortars and rockets in a last attempt to stop rebel forces consolidating their grip on the Libyan capital.

A day after the rebels had celebrated their capture of the regime’s stronghold at Bab al-Aziziya, the compound came under heavy fire from the pro-Gaddafi area of Abu Salim and the woods around the city zoo, which rebels said were “infested” with snipers. Green flags, the symbol of the ousted regime, and pro-Gaddafi gunmen could still be seen in front of a large building on the edge of the woods once used by Saif al-Islam, one of Gaddafi’s sons, to receive guests.

Gaddafi loyalists, who the rebels said were mostly Arab mercenaries, also fired on the road leading to Tripoli airport.

Rebels said 400 people had been killed and 2,000 injured in the battle for Tripoli so far.

Beyond the capital, rebel columns closed in on the coastal city of Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace, where loyalist troops fired Scud missiles at the rebel-held town of Misrata.

It was unclear whether the fighting was a desperate last stand or the start of a guerrilla campaign by a “stay-behind” force, modelled on the tactics Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants used in Iraq in 2003.

A pro-Gaddafi radio station broadcast statements by the deposed leader claiming he had “discreetly” toured the capital and “did not feel that Tripoli was in danger”. He reportedly said the retreat from his citadel at Bab al-Aziziya had been a tactical move and vowed to fight to the death, calling on his supporters to “cleanse” Tripoli of “devils and traitors”.

But in a fresh blow to Gaddafi, the deputy director of foreign security in the Libyan intelligence service, General Khalifah Mohammed Ali, and health minister Mohammed Hijazi, declared their allegiance to rebel forces in interviews aired on al-Arabiya TV. They are among a growing number of Libyan officials who have switched sides since rebels gained the upper hand.

“I put myself in the service of the nation and call on generals and soldiers who are the sons of Libya to join the 17th February revolution,” Ali said in the interview with the Dubai-based satellite channel.

In London, the foreign secretary, William Hague, repeated his assertion that the fighting represented “the death throes” of the regime. “I think it is time now for Colonel Gaddafi to stop issuing delusional statements and to recognise what has happened, that control of the country is not going to return, he said in a statement.” “He should be telling his dwindling and remaining forces now to stand down.”

Rebel fighters continued to hunt for the fugitive despot, reportedly searching the tunnel network beneath Bab al-Aziziya. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the opposition National Transitional Council (NTC), announced a reward for Gaddafi’s capture of 2m Libyan dinars (£1m), funded by a businessman in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, and an amnesty for past crimes for anyone in his entourage who killed or detained him.

Rebel fighters tried to move into the Abu Salim area, but were kept at bay by heavy sniper and mortar fire from the woods and from high buildings in the district.

Around 35 journalists and diplomats have been freed from the Rixos hotel on the edge of Abu Salim, where they had been held for five days by pro-Gaddafi gunmen. Their release was negotiated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, who ferried the journalists to another hotel elsewhere in the city.

More details emerged of the operation to take control the city, codenamed Mermaid Dawn. According to a rebel military spokesman quoted by AP, men from Tripoli who supported the revolution slipped out of the capital three months ago for training in Benghazi. They then infiltrated the city either by sea, posing as fishermen, or through the western mountains.

“They went back to Tripoli and waited; they became sleeper cells,” said military spokesman Fadlallah Haroun, who helped organise the operation. He said that when the signal was given, on 21 August, about 150 men rose up inside Tripoli.

The commander of the battalion charged with defending the entrance to the city, Muhammad Eshkal, was said by another NTC official to have agreed not to put up resistance because Gaddafi had ordered his cousin’s death 20 years ago.

A US official was quoted as confirming reports that Qatari special forces had helped spearhead the rebel storming of Bab al-Aziziya, and that British, French and Italian advisers had played a role.

In Paris, Nicolas Sarkozy promised the NTC prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, that French troops would support the rebels as long as pro-Gaddafi forces resisted. An international conference in the French capital on 1 September, co-ordinated by the British and French governments, would meanwhile mark the transition from military to civilian support for the Libyan revolution.

NTC leaders had been expected to arrive in Tripoli to help bolster the council’s legitimacy as an interim government, but it was not clear whether they had put off their trip because of security concerns.

Some NTC officials were involved in talks in Doha with diplomats from a contact group of major powers, aimed at arranging short-term finance for the government. At the UN, US, British and French diplomats were drafting a resolution ordering the unblocking of $1.5bn (£900m) in frozen Libyan funds at the beginning of the war.

Worldwide, Libyan embassies that had not hitherto changed sides, including Tokyo and Addis Ababa, replaced Gaddafi’s green flag with the tricolour used by the NTC. In London, NTC officials, who already had control of the embassy, laid a doormat bearing Gaddafi’s image so visitors would trample on his likeness.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “French riot police in uproar over lunchtime booze ban” was written by Angelique Chrisafis in Paris, for The Guardian on Thursday 21st April 2011 19.16 UTC

They might be lampooned as a bunch of truncheon-happy meatheads by leftwing street demonstrators, but that doesn’t mean French riot police don’t appreciate a nice glass of Burgundy with their lunch.

The notorious Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, or CRS, are outraged at an official decree stating they can no longer drink wine or beer with their meals.

Until now, a civilised tipple was part of the daily lunch menu of the controversial force, lauded by Nicolas Sarkozy, whose trademark black body armour and riot shields are a regular feature on French streets.

A glass of wine, beer or cider – but not spirits – was always permitted with lunch, including while on duty. Even packed lunches provided out of riot vans while they were patrolling demonstrations came with a can of beer or glass of wine.

But in October last year, authorities were annoyed when pictures published on the website Bakchich showed uniformed riot police swigging beer from cans on the sidelines of a sixth-formers’ street-protest against pension reforms in Perreux-sur-Marne, north of Paris. The website reported that having told locals it was too dangerous to go outside during the high-school demo, uniformed officers stopped for a beer on a street corner in full view of the public.

Police unions expressed their fury at the new decree. Paul Le Guennec, of the biggest riot police union, Unité Police SGP-FO, said the French public had not seemed shocked at the notion of a CRS officer drinking at lunch.

“Does the fact that having a glass of wine while eating prevent any kind of worker from carrying out their job? I don’t think the chief of police drinks water when he’s having a meal,” Le Guennec told the paper Le JDD.

The union argued that the CRS did not have a higher incidence of alcohol problems than the rest of society, saying a small drink with lunch was in line with French labour law.

But unions warned that the row over lunchtime drinking should not be allowed to detract from their protests over cuts to the 14,000-strong force. Earlier this year, there was unprecedented strike action and protests by riot police over cuts to barracks and staff, with some CRS in Marseille going on hunger strike in an embarrassment to the security-minded Sarkozy.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “Image of France as a generous welfare state marred by grim reality” was written by Phillip Inman Economics correspondent, in Paris, for The Guardian on Monday 21st March 2011 17.46 UTC

Thousands will pour into the Galeries Lafayette this week to enjoy the last few days of the spring sales and beat the recession. Tourists and Parisians will find huge discounts on designer clothes on every floor of the ornately domed department store that dominates Boulevard Haussman, Paris’s main shopping street.

As a measure of confidence, the sales present a gloomy picture of France’s middle classes and their appetite for shopping. Marc Jacobs, Chloé and Lacoste offer 30% discounts. Givenchy dresses are knocked down by 40% and the Galleries’ own ranges can be bought for 50% less than the list price. Only Prada, Dior and a handful of international brands hold their value .

Like their British counterparts, French shoppers can only be enticed with massive bargains. Technically, France like Britain, has escaped recession. But to ordinary French workers, blue and white collar, the pain of the last two years lingers. Shopping is expensive even in the sales, especially when a mix of high taxes and punishing national insurance leaves you with one of the lowest rates of take home pay of any western country. Only Belgium and Hungary exceed its average 45% tax on pay.

France appears to have a natural order still in place with food and wine at its heart and a generous welfare state to support the sick, the elderly and those out of work. Yet this picture disguises a slow decline, made worse by the financial crisis, that leaves the average French family struggling to make ends meet.

Loïc Sadoulet, a professor of economics at the Paris-based business school Insead, says the word that sums up France is disconnect. By which he means the rosy image and the dour reality are miles apart.

A trip on the Paris Metro makes the point. It was always dowdy, if not a little shabby, which most residents and visitors accepted as part of its charm. Now there are major stations closed for refurbishment and some passageways are reminiscent of ancient caves with green slime and blown plaster adding to the effect. The construction at one station of glass screens to prevent passengers falling on the tracks can only be described as makeshift, with bits of wood screwed to the platform floor to hold the metal posts in place.

Paris train workers joined the protests against pension reforms last October and closed the city for several days after similar shutdowns in 2007, 2005 and 2003, over government plans to cut pensions and welfare.

An apocryphal story about France’s slide from greatness goes back to the decision in 2005 on where to hold the 2012 Olympics. It is said the top brass from the IOC arrived for a fact-finding mission just as the Metro workers began another strike. A quick look through the records showed that the frequency of strike action meant there was a strong likelihood an Olympic year would be no exception. With little else to separate the bids, London was declared the winner.

True or not, the French establishment vowed revenge and last year president Nicolas Sarkozy pushed through a law forcing vital public services to provide a minimum service during industrial action. Railway workers will be among the state employees caught by the law.

Recent polls have revealed the confusion many French workers feel about the colourful and sometimes violent protests against Sarkozy’s welfare cuts and plans to end decades old employment protections. A majority say the reforms are necessary while telling pollsters they support the protests.

This perplexing need to adopt both sides of the argument has paralysed debate, especially on pensions and the totemic 35 hour week. Unlike Germany, which has spent 10 years discussing and implementing reforms with a view to becoming more competitive, the French have reached a position of stasis. Apart from the new strike law and bill freeing universities from state control, pensions reform is almost all Sarkozy has to show for his four years in power.

Next month the Paris-based think tank, the OECD, will publish its biannual report on the French economy. It is expected to argue the Elysée palace must move more quickly to tackle a low growth, high unemployment economy that could spark widespread social unrest .

Antonio Gurria, the OECD boss, will stand next to finance minister Christine Lagarde and politely urge her to free small and medium sized businesses from the straitjacket that has stifled growth and innovation for decades.

Innovation has tended to come from France’s industrial behemoths – France Telecom, Renault, engineering firm Alstom and Compagnie Générale des Eaux, the water company that spawned media giant Vivendi and Veolia, a waste management firm that empties many of the UK’s dustbins. Others such as Pernod Ricard and the luxury goods maker LVMH dominate their industries. However, the government’s support and reliance on their tax revenues has been at the expense of smaller firms.

The strategy is also undermined by the vulnerability of these large businesses to innovative rivals with access to cheap skilled labour. Renault and Peugeot have seen Mercedes, BMW and Audi sweep them aside in the race for Asian customers. Air France remains loss making and the oil business Total, with its close links to France’s former colonies, is vulnerable to the changing political weather in many of the world’s hotspots. Last week it was forced to suspend production in Libya and is embroiled in bribery allegations over deals in Iraq.

Hervé Boulhol, the OECD’s France expert, says the country’s finances have deteriorated for the last 35 years. Since the financial crash the situation has worsened. “The public finances must be fixed because while France has been largely immune to the worst of financial crisis, at least so far, it needs to address deep-seated problems,” he says.

Boulhol reels off a list of measures that Sarkozy could implement to bring the country more firmly into the 21st century. First it must get more women into work by reforming a tax system that encourages them to stay at home to reduce the household’s taxable income. The result is the lowest employment rate among the 30 rich nations assessed by the OECD.

Second, its benefits system, which accounted for 3.5% of GDP in 2005, first in the OECD rankings, must be reformed. It is a source of Gallic pride but the system is largely universal, and boosts the incomes of the richest, as much as the poorest. Boulhol describes it as “regressive spending” that would be better channelled to the poorest. It may be the main reason middle income couples have continued to have children, unlike Italian and German families, but offering the same benefit to the wealthy is “just about writing cheques to people who are not going to change their behaviour,” he says.

A third problem is that France has the largest number of people in retirement as a proportion of the overall population.

The battle last year, which saw school cooks join teachers, factory workers and students on the streets of Paris, Marseille and Lyon, was eventually won by Sarkozy. A law pushing up the minimum retirement age to 62 was passed along with measures that mean younger workers must wait till they are 67 to pick up their full entitlement.

Bruno Tardieu, a full time official at one of the country’s most active anti poverty groups, ATD Quart Monde, is concerned that a growing number of working class people are being shut out of the benefits enjoyed by a decreasing number of white collar workers. He says every town is blighted by high unemployment, while 26% of young people are out of work compared with 20% in the UK.

A volunteering scheme designed to put 200,000 young people back into the workplace is directed largely at college educated under 25s and not those with poor qualifications. Tardieu will meet government officials this week to focus on ways to include low skilled people in the scheme.

“It is elitist. Poor groups don’t know it exists. It offers very low pay. And it presumes the young person will be housed and subsidised by their parents, which is often not possible for people from poorer families,” he says.

Back at Insead, Sadoulet argues that the French fear of Anglo-Saxon capitalism has paralysed the debate and left poor workers to bear the brunt of globalisation.

The number of “year in, year out” workers are growing he says, as companies resist giving full benefits to new employees. After six months, staff accrue full employment rights. A short term, six-month contract can be rolled over for another term, but then the workers must be laid off. Studies show that after a year of work, usually on the minimum wage, these workers spend a year on the dole, hence the “year in year out” tag that dogs them.

“France has spent two decades ignoring the problem and the longer it is left the bigger it will become. The debate about what to do, who should shoulder the cost, and how best to encourage innovation, is in its infancy compared with the UK and Germany,” he says.

“There is still a knee jerk reaction that says simply tax the rich some more. But increasingly ambitious people are leaving, they are going to London, to Silicon Valley, and anyway, there simply aren’t enough rich people to pay for the current level of welfare bills”, Sadoulet says

Union leaders point to the success of the country’s banks and risk averse property market as reasons to be cheerful. Here was good reason to avoid the risk taking of the Anglo Saxons.

They have a point. Compare Sarkozy, who pledged €40bn (£35bn) to boost bank finances and a further €320bn to guarantee interbank lending, with Gordon Brown, who had to pledge about £850bn to prop up the British banking system, of which £117bn was pumped straight into the worst hit banks.

But while Britain suffers wild property crashes, prices in many areas of France keep rising and finished higher in 2010 on the year before despite predictions of a slump. The steady rise has taken prices beyond the UK and shut middle income families out of the market, or prevented them moving. The long-term effect is the same as in the UK, where the financial crisis has left the incomes and assets of the wealthiest largely untouched, while hitting the growing number of – young people, immigrants and unskilled workers – who stand on the outside of protected, unionised industries.

Much of the French establishment, like the wider population, supports the unions’ conservative, old world view that globalisation is to be feared, feeding the sense of paralysis.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “Full-face veils outlawed as France spells out controversial niqab ban” was written by Angelique Chrisafis in Paris, for The Guardian on Thursday 3rd March 2011 20.25 UTC

From Saudi tourists window-shopping on the Champs-Élysées to Muslim women in a departure lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport or the few young French converts on suburban estates, any woman who steps outside in France wearing a veil that covers her face will be breaking the law from next month.

France’s bitterly divisive debate on Muslim women’s clothing took a new turn when the legal details of the controversial “burqa ban” were published in a decree by the prime minister. From 11 April women will be banned from wearing the niqab – full-face Muslim veil – in any public place, including while walking down the street, taking a bus, at a bank, library or shop, or in a cinema or theatre. It will be illegal for a woman in niqab to visit the Louvre, or any other museum, take a train, visit a hospital or collect her child from school.

Face veils will be outlawed virtually anywhere outside women’s own homes, except when they are worshipping in a religious place or travelling as a passenger in a private car, although traffic police may stop them if they think they do not have a clear “field of vision” while driving. Women wearing niqab will be fined €150 (about £130) and be given a citizenship class to remind them of the republican values of secular France and gender equality. Any third party found to have coerced a woman into wearing the face covering, for example a husband or family member, risks a €30,000 fine and a year in prison.

The niqab ban, proposed by a communist MP but later championed by Nicolas Sarkozy and his rightwing ruling UMP party, has reopened the long-running debate over how the country with Europe’s biggest Muslim community integrates Islam into its secular republic.

The timing of the new law risks plunging France even further into an identity crisis. Sarkozy, desperate to secure the far-right electorate in next year’s presidential election, is under fire for deliberately stigmatising France’s Muslim population to win votes. He has ordered a nationwide debate on Islam’s place in secular France, briefing journalists he wants no halal food options in school canteens, no prayers outside and no minarets. He was defiant on Thursday, giving a speech lauding the “Christian heritage of France”.

Sarkozy’s move comes as Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the Front National, has seen her party’s popularity soar to unprecedented levels since she compared Muslims praying in the streets outside overcrowded mosques to the Nazi occupation of France. She also criticised halal-only fast food restaurants.

One indication of the mood of unease in France is local authorities taking steps to ban proposed “pork and wine aperitifs” by rightwingers deliberately staged near Muslim places of worship, including a “rosé wine and porchetta” evening to be held near a Muslim place of prayer in Nice on Friday night.

The prime minister, François Fillon, this week distanced himself from Sarkozy’s debate on Islam and said he was opposed to the “stigmatisation of Muslims”. To get around accusations that the niqab ban unfairly prejudices French Muslims, his office has been tying itself in semantic knots over the law.

It is now officially called the bill against “covering one’s face in public places”, which Fillon deems an issue of public order and gender equality, not secularism. This means wearing any face covering, including balaclavas, hoodies or masks, is against the new law. So the state has had to seek special exemptions for motorcycle helmets or sports equipment such as fencing masks. There are also exemptions for people appearing in parades, celebrations or places of worship. After a teacher was convicted for trying to rip a face veil from an Emirati tourist in a shop, the law states public officials cannot force women to remove their niqabs in the street but must instead call the police or gendarmes.

Fillon argued that face coverings put those who wear them “in a situation of exclusion and inferiority incompatible with the principles of liberty, equality and human dignity affirmed by the French republic.”

But the immigration historian Patrick Weil has warned that the law is open to challenge from the European court of human rights. He said the battle to stop women wearing niqab did not justify that “a woman who believes that her God orders her to wear it should be stopped from going out to buy food to feed herself, or from going to see a doctor”.

A tiny minority of women in France wear full niqab, far fewer than in the UK: Muslim groups estimate only a few hundred out of France’s more than 5 million Muslim population.

In 2004, after another heated national debate, France banned headscarves and all conspicuous religious symbols from state schools. But since the niqab ban was voted in by parliament, standard headscarves have also become a bone of contention in high-profile cases.

A worker in a private creche went to court and lost after she claimed she was fired for refusing to take off her headscarf. The education minister insisted that mothers in headscarves should not be allowed to accompany children on school outings. One mother banned from escorting her son’s primary school class for wearing a simple head-covering said: “I’m French, not a fanatic, I just want to be able to practise my religion without being ostracised.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Despite the fact that British soldiers continue to fight and die alongside US forces in Afghanistan, President Obama never misses an opportunity to poke Britain in the eye. During a visit this week from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama said America has no better ally than France.

‘We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people.’

This was a surprise to many in the UK considering the more than 10,000 Brits fighting in Afghanistan as compared with the 3,000 French who don’t actually fight. Obama’s latest comments follow a pattern of insults towards the UK which begun the moment he became president. Obama’s first act as was to send back the bust of Winston Churchill that President Bush prominently displayed in the Oval Office throughout his presidency.

Suffice it to say the Brits are getting a little tired of being kicked in the teeth by the American president.

Tory MP Patrick Mercer, a former commander of the Sherwood Foresters regiment, said: ‘I’m getting a bit fed up with the American President using terms like “best ally” so loosely.

‘It’s Britain that has had more than 300 servicemen killed in Afghanistan, not France.

‘That to my mind is a lot more powerful than any political gesture making.’

It’s a wonderful thing that America now has good relations with France. Sarkozy is indeed a great friend of America and a breath of fresh air after that skunk Chirac was in power. But Britain is without question America’s greatest ally. It is Britain who has been steadfastly by our side through war after war. The war in Afghanistan has become hugely unpopular in Britain and throughout Europe. It’s a political liability for PM David Cameron to remain so deeply engaged there. Yet Britain remains. After 9/11, it was Britain who was by our side. Tony Blair was at Ground Zero with Bush only days after the attack. He promised unconditional support from the UK and he delivered on that promise.

In an increasingly dangerous world where friends are hard to come by we would do well to remember who our real friends are.

Watch France’s first lady Carla Bruni perform at Nelson Mandela’s birthday concert in New York.

This is the first time I’ve seen Bruni perform, and I must say that I’m impressed. She sings one song in French and one in perfect English.

When the camera pans to President Sarkozy in the audience — he’s positively beaming.

(hat tip Huffington Post)

According to the Daily Mail, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has married his supermodel girlfriend Carla Bruni.

The influential L’Est Républicain newspaper, which has close links with Mr Sarkozy’s former wife Cecilia, said the ceremony took place at the Elysée Palace in Paris last Thursday.

It was a civil ceremony attended by a few friends, according to the paper, which quoted a source whom it said was there.

President Sarkozy met Bruni at a dinner party less than two months ago!

You have to respect the man’s hustle. He’s not about to let that Presidential bed get cold!!

-Chris Jones

According to the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche French President Nicolas Sarkozy intends to marry his supermodel girlfriend Carla Bruni on Feb. 8 or 9.

The recently divorced French leader has flaunted their unmarried relationship on recent holidays in Egypt and Jordan, fanning criticism that he is playing too fast and loose with the presidential image.

The newspaper report said that in December, less than a month after Sarkozy met Bruni, he gave her a heart-shaped diamond engagement ring.

Sarkozy and his wife of 11 years, Cecilia, divorced in October. Their marital problems became well known in May 2005 when she appeared in public at the side of event organizer Richard Attias.

A marriage to Bruni, a one-time star of the catwalks who is now a singer, would be Sarkozy’s third: He divorced his first wife, Marie, in the late 80s — after he had met and befriended Cecilia.

Bruni, an Italian-born French citizen, has dated famous men including Mick Jagger and Donald Trump. She has also reportedly been linked to singer Eric Clapton and actor Vincent Perez.

France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, burst onto the Washington scene on Tuesday, in his first official visit to the White House and asking the United States to embrace him as a friend.

Mr. Sarkozy backslapped and hugged his way through the day. He also proclaimed his determination to be a reliable partner of the United States.

“I come to Washington to bear a very simple message, a message that I bear on behalf of all Frenchmen,” he said in a toast at a formal White House dinner in his honor. “I want to reconquer the heart of America.”

“Sarko l’Américain,” as he is called, is considered the most pro-American French president in decades. Mr. Sarkozy’s relationship with Mr. Bush is said to be warm, and his stance on Iran tough.

That’s not the attitude Bush would have ever heard from former French President Jacques Chirac who publicly lobbied against the United States at the U.N. and everywhere else. In electing Sarkozy the French people have clearly rejected Chirac’s socialist policies that have damaged the economy in France in recent years.

In his remarks in the State Dining Room, he spoke with passion about freedom and liberty and the need for U.S.-French cooperation in addressing terrorism, nuclear proliferation, poverty and religious fanaticism.

The U.S. and France back tough diplomacy to keep Iran from having nuclear weapons. They have jointly sponsored U.N. resolutions supporting Lebanese sovereignty. And while France opposed the war in Iraq, Sarkozy sent his foreign minister on a surprise three-day trek to Baghdad in August to enhance France’s role in Iraq’s future.

“I never quite understood why we had to fight with the United States,” Sarkozy said earlier in the day at a meeting of the French-American Business Council.

Sarkozy has wasted no time in his bid to modernize France, in part by trying to inject an American-style work ethic. As a sign of his pro-American tendencies, he even took a summer vacation in the United States.

Many Americans who have been apart of the widespread “Boycott France” campaign can finally in turn begin vacationing in France again.