France's foreign minister is facing fresh calls to resign as she struggled to extract herself from a controversy over a holiday she took in Tunisia while its uprising flared.
Senior opposition Socialists criticised Michele Alliot-Marie after she acknowledged on Saturday she had used a Tunisian businessman's private jet several times during the holiday at the end of December, not only for one trip as she had indicated last week.
"Alliot-Marie gets in more trouble every day and her resignation is all but inevitable. It's a question of hours," Jean-Marc Ayrault, who heads the Socialists in France's National Assembly, told RTL radio.
Senior Socialist lawmaker Francois Hollande said the flap had left a void in French diplomacy and called on President Nicolas Sarkozy to dump her.
"Either he defends and keeps Michele Alliot-Marie . . . and he bears the consequences in the 2012 presidential elections, or he takes decisions and makes choices about the government line-up," Hollande told i-Tele television.
Ms Alliot-Marie insisted on Saturday that she had done nothing wrong and said she had paid for her trip herself with the exception of her hotels, which her parents, who were also on the trip along with her partner, paid for.
The attacks left fellow conservatives scrambling to rally behind her and French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said she had her support "without reserve" and hoped that she would stay.
"I'm not the team leader. It's up to the prime minister (Francois Fillon) to make decisions about his team, but personally I hope" she stays, Lagarde said during an interview on France 5 television.
France, Tunisia's former colonial ruler, was surprised by the pace of developments before Ben Ali fled on January 14th, and two days before Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, Ms Alliot-Marie provoked shouts of anger in parliament when she said Paris was offering Tunisia French crowd control expertise.
Reuters