FRANCE:A DAMAGING row over the French government's links to authoritarian Arab regimes took a new turn last night when prime minister François Fillon admitted that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak lent him an aircraft during a recent family holiday.
As foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie again resisted calls to resign for accepting flights aboard a Tunisian businessman’s private jet while the country’s uprising flared, Mr Fillon issued a statement saying he and his family were hosted by the Egyptian government during a new year holiday in the southern city of Aswan.
The statement was apparently aimed at pre-empting a story due to appear in this morning's edition of the satirical and investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné.
Mr Fillon said he and his family were hosted by the Egyptian government during a stay in Aswan from December 26th to January 2nd.
The family was treated, “at the invitation of the Egyptian authorities”, to a Nile boat trip and a flight on a government jet to see the temples at Abu Simbel, the statement said.
The prime minister said he paid personally for his family’s flight to Aswan on a French government aircraft and confirmed that he met Mr Mubarak during his stay in Aswan.
The new disclosures come at a delicate time for Mr Fillon, who has strongly defended Ms Alliot-Marie against opposition calls for her resignation for accepting flights aboard private jets in Tunisia in December.
Le Canardalleged that the tycoon who gave Ms Alliot-Marie and her partner the use of his aircraft was close to deposed Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, but Ms Alliot-Marie has insisted he was a personal friend who was a victim of the ruling clan's interference in business.
With the foreign minister already damaged by her offer to share French security expertise with the Tunisian authorities just days before Ben Ali fled the country, however, the opposition has insisted she must leave her post. “The only way for Ms Alliot-Marie to recover a little dignity is for her to go,” said Socialist Party spokesman Benoît Hamon.
The French government was already suffering from acute embarrassment over its handling of the Tunisian uprising when the Alliot-Marie story broke.
French ministers remained virtually silent as the death toll rose in the final weeks of Ben Ali’s regime, only criticising the disproportionate use of force when a French-Tunisian man was killed two days before Ben Ali fled the country.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has acknowledged failures in his government’s response to events in Tunisia.