Free Republic

From the outset, the first lady has refused to take on the traditional role, but how will a country inured to peccadilloes react to a possible divorce? The president's wife has gone missing. And the question of the day in France on Friday was: Has she gone for good? Cecilia Sarkozy didn't vote for her husband, Nicolas, in May; she didn't accompany him to lunch with the Bushes in Maine last summer; and the woman at Sarkozy's side at a celebratory dinner after France's quarter- finals victory in the Rugby World Cup a week ago? Not his wife, but one...

Will the real Cécilia Sarkozy please stand up? Or at least, France is asking, could she please decide on whether she wants the job of First Lady of the Republic? The Elysée says Cécilia Sarkozy role as First Lady will be become clearer by the autumn Is it the Mrs Sarkozy who snubbed a lunch with the American president's family due to a "sore throat", only to be seen shopping with friends the next day? Or is it the Mrs Sarkozy who flew to Libya to meet Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to help secure the release of six medics accused of...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose election in May put Washington-Paris relations on the mend, will break from his US vacation to meet with President George W. Bush on Saturday, the White House said. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Wednesday the private meeting between the two at the Bush family's summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine could mark a "new era" in the two countries' relationship. The two, along with French first lady Cecilia Sarkozy and her US counterpart Laura Bush, will have a private lunch Saturday in the Bush estate on the Atlantic, Snow said. Sarkozy and his family have...

For a woman who reluctantly took on the job of France's first lady, Cecilia Sarkozy has been surprisingly front and centre in the shuttle diplomacy that helped free six medics on death row in Libya. But her sudden insertion into the process has provoked questions back home in France about her role and upset European Union officials who spent years negotiating with the Libyan authorities. The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were accused of infecting children with HIV through transfusions while working at a hospital in Benghazi, Libya, and held in detention for eight years. Medical experts say...

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to life in prison in Libya for allegedly contaminating children with the AIDS virus left Tripoli on Tuesday on board a plane with the French president’s wife, France’s presidential palace said. The delegation, which arrived in Tripoli on Sunday to try to negotiate their release, includes the European Union commissioner for foreign affairs, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and the chief French presidential aide, Claude Gueant. The plane was heading to Bulgaria, the Elysée Palace said.

Mrs Sarkozy strides on to the world stage By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 2:05am BST 14/07/2007 Cécilia Sarkozy: unscheduled trip to meet Gaddafi Barely seen in public since her husband became president of France in May, Cécilia Sarkozy shot to the forefront of European diplomacy yesterday after making an unscheduled trip to meet Col Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. The surprise visit appeared to be Mrs Sarkozy's "coming out" after weeks of doubt and speculation over what role she might play as France's Première Dame. The 49-year-old former model once said the idea of being First Lady "bored" her....