PARIS, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy threw down the gauntlet in his New Year's speech, attacking his colleagues at the top of the government.
Sarkozy is expected to be a candidate for president in 2007, opposing the current prime minister, Dominique de Villepin. The Independent says he did everything short of formally declaring his candidacy.
France is "a powerless state ... stuck in its own debt," Sarkozy said, making fun of de Villepin for urging the country to be confident. He suggested the current system, with no term limits for presidents, allows them "to endure and do nothing," a description that presumably applies to President Jacques Chirac.
During last year's riots in the immigrant suburbs of Paris, Sarkozy, an immigrant himself, was one of the most controversial figures in the government. He combined brutal criticism of the young men who were setting cars on fire and fighting police with a call for measures to alleviate the poverty and hopelessness that had sparked the riots.
