French Foreign Minister Resigns Over Her Ties With Deposed Tunisian President

Her excuse: "When I am on holiday, I am not foreign minister."

Sure. So it should be OK for her to vacation in Tunisia during the uprising, travel in a private jet of a businessman with ties to Ben Ali and to offer France's support for him with riot police...

I suppose she also sent tear gas grenades to Tunisia as a private citizen.

According to wiki, she had considered running for the President of France in 2007; eventually she endorsed Nicolas Sarkozy.

Succeeding her as foreign minister will be Alain Juppe, current defense minister and former prime minister under Jacques Chirac, and an ex-convict...

The so-called West has no moral authority anywhere any more.

From Al Jazeera (2/27/2011):

Michele Alliot-Marie, the French foreign minister, has resigned following weeks of criticism over her contacts with the former leadership of Tunisia.

Her office announced her resignation on Sunday, saying that a letter had been sent to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president.

In her letter, a copy of which was seen by news agency, Alliot-Marie made clear she felt she had done not done anything wrong.

"While I do not feel that I have committed any wrongdoing, I have ... decided to leave my job as foreign minister," Alliot-Marie wrote in her resignation letter to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president.

"I ask you to accept my resignation," she wrote in the letter.

"Since several weeks, I have been the target of political attacks and then in the media, using, to create suspicion, counter-truths and generalisations."

Alliot-Marie became embroiled in a series of controversies over her links to Tunisia after she returned from holiday there last month during the popular uprising that overthrew Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, then president.

Subsequent revelations about her and her family's links to Ben Ali's entourage, and her offer for France to help riot police quell the uprising there, made her position increasingly untenable.

It emerged that during her Tunisian holiday she used the private jet of a businessman allegedly linked to Ben Ali, from whom her parents also bought a stake in a company.

Faced with rising criticism, she announced: "When I am on holiday, I am not foreign minister."

A spokesman for Sarkozy's office declined immediate comment about whether the president had accepted the resignation, which comes amid speculation Sarkozy is planning a cabinet shakeup.

The president is expected to replace Alliot-Marie with Alain Juppe, the defence minister and a veteran conservative who served as prime minister and foreign minister in the 1990s.

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