Sarkozy snipes at 'dim' Spanish PM and 'weak' Barack Obama

The US President is weak, the Spanish leader is dim, the German Chancellor is clinging on to France's coat-tails and the head of the European Commission is irrelevant.

That, at any rate, is the world according to President Sarkozy, who has spent the week airing his unvarnished opinions of Barack Obama and an array of international politicians - abruptly ending France's honeymoon with the US and needling Washington on several strategic issues.

In the latest in a stream of accounts from the �lys�e Palace, Mr Sarkozy was quoted yesterday as telling an all-party group of MPs that Mr Obama was inexperienced and indecisive. "Obama has a subtle mind, very clever and very charismatic," the French President said. "But he was elected two months ago and had never run a ministry. There are a certain number of things on which he has no position. And he is not always up to standard on decision-making and efficiency."

The US President had underperformed on climate change when they met, Mr Sarkozy said, according to an account of the MP's session in the newspaper Lib�ration. "I told him, 'I don't think that you have quite understood what we are doing on carbon dioxide'."

Mr Sarkozy was apparently irked by media reports that Mr Obama had saved the day in London by persuading President Hu of China to reach a compromise with France over tax havens. Mr Sarkozy's version is that he shamed Mr Obama into action, telling him: "You were elected to build a new world. Tax havens are the embodiment of the old world."

Mr Sarkozy was also reported yesterday to have cracked a dubious joke about Europe's "Obamamania". According to L'Express news magazine, he mentioned Mr Obama's planned visit to Normandy for the D-day anniversary in June, saying: "I am going to ask him to walk on the Channel, and he'll do it."

This jaundiced view of Mr Obama may have been prompted by the US President's heartfelt welcome at the G20, Nato and EU summits. "The President is annoyed by what he sees as the naivety and the herd mentality of the media," wrote Claude Askolovitch, a commentator close to the elysee Palace.

The end of the short-lived Franco-American honeymoon also reflects a decision to swing France back towards its traditional role as counterbalance to US power, a shift that began with tension over the London economic summit. In the elysee account Mr Sarkozy played the pivotal role as upholder of principle in the face of ineffectual US leadership. He had telephoned Gordon Brown on the eve of the summit and threatened not to turn up at all if the leaders refused his demand to name and shame tax havens, according to the leaks.

Although Mr Sarkozy has taken France back into full membership of the Nato alliance, over the past week he has picked various quarrels with Washington, demanding, for instance, a separate headquarters for a new European defence force - an idea opposed by Britain and the US. He has criticised Mr Obama for calling for Turkish membership of the EU.

Mr Sarkozy also turned his guns on his fellow Europeans. He told the assembled MPs that Spain's Socialist Government had decided to stop advertising on state television - a year after he did the same for France. "You know who they cited as the example?" Mr Sarkozy asked.

When a Socialist MP interjected: "You can say a lot of things about [Jose Luis Rodriguez] Zapatero . . ." Mr Sarkozy retorted: "Perhaps he's not very clever - but I know people who were very clever and who did not make the second round of the presidential election." That was a reference to Lionel Jospin, the former French Socialist leader who was knocked out by Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 race.

Mr Sarkozy said that Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, had come round to his side on the economy at the G20 summit only when she realised that the German economy was in trouble. She "did not have any other choice but to rally to my position", he said. Jose Manuel Barroso, the Portuguese President of the Commission, was described as "totally absent" from the G20 discussions.

He did, however, go on to extol the virtues of his favourite fellow leader. "The important thing in democracy is to be re-elected. Look at Berlusconi. He has been re-elected three times," Mr Sarkozy said.

He also seems to have adopted Mr Berlusconi's idea of tact. The Italian Prime Minister, who referred to Mr Obama as "suntanned", used the same adjective while touring a makeshift school in L'Aquila yesterday. He said to a black priest: "My compliments, you are very suntanned," and told a black boy: "I wish I had as much time to lie in the sun as you do."