PARIS: President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday moved to rescue France's foreign policy, left voiceless by revolutions in the Arab world, set to address the nation after axing his scandal-hit foreign minister.
Foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie, 64, the main target of attacks from all quarters in recent weeks, tendered her resignation after returning from Kuwait, insisting she had committed no wrongdoing.
"I ask you to accept my resignation," she wrote in a letter which begins with a handwritten "Dear Nicolas" and a copy of which was seen by AFP
"Since several weeks, I have been the target of political attacks and then in the media, using, to create suspicion, counter-truths and generalisations," wrote an apparently unbowed Alliot-Marie.
"For the last two weeks, it is my family's private life that has been suffering real harassment at the hands of certain media (and) I cannot accept that some people use this cabal to try to make people believe in a weakening of France's international policy."
In order to explain the minor reshuffle and his perspective on the revolts rocking the Middle East and North Africa, Sarkozy was then to address the nation at 1900 GMT, with his popularity lower than ever in opinion polls.
A source close to Sarkozy said the president would use his television appearance to address the situation in Libya and Tunisia and "lay down a road map for France and it's future in an enormously changing world."
Several sources said that Alliot-Marie is to be replaced by Defence Minister Alain Juppe, 65, who already served as France's top diplomat from 1993 to 1995.
"In an emergency, Sarkozy looks to Alain Juppe," wrote the Journal du Dimanche weekly, calling Juppe a "saviour" and "second prime minister."
The reshuffle comes only three months after the last one, on November 14, which was supposed to give Sarkozy the team with which he could fight the looming 2012 presidential election.
But the Arab uprisings, which have deposed friends of Paris, including Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, caught French diplomacy off guard and have affected the government's overall functioning.
Alliot-Marie has been the focal point for criticism. First of all she made a not very diplomatic offer for France to help Tunisian riot police in their task of quelling popular revolt there on January 11.
Then it turned out that she had holidayed in former colony Tunisia during the uprising, using the private jet of a businessman allegedly linked to Ben Ali's regime, from whom her parents also bought a stake in a company.
For Sarkozy, the need to create a new platform from which he can relaunch himself during his presidency of the G8 and G20 has become urgent.
The Socialist opposition said Sunday ahead of her resignation that Alliot-Marie's departure was "a fairly logical end" but "the trouble with French foreign policy is Nicolas Sarkozy."
Sarkozy's "foreign policy has marginalised us not only in the Arab world but also in sub-Saharan Africa," said Socialist party spokesman Benoit Hamon, because of what he called a "failure" and "complete fiasco".
"Today France's voice no longer exists," said the head of the Socialist party and possible future presidential candidate Martine Aubry. "French diplomacy is really a wreck."
Criticism has even come from within the French diplomatic corps.
An open letter from a group of unnamed diplomats published in Le Monde last week slammed the "amateurism" and "impulsiveness" of Sarkozy's foreign policy, while former ambassador Jean-Christophe Rufin on Sunday criticised the "damage" done to France's image.
Several names have been floated to replace Juppe at the defence ministry.
They include the head of the ruling UMP party in the senate, Gerard Longuet, former premier Jean-Pierre Raffarin or even current Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, whose job could go to Sarkozy adviser Claude Gueant.
As for Alliot-Marie's partner, minister for parliamentary relations Patrick Ollier, he said on Friday that he would also quit if she lost her job.
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