Sarkozy rips world leaders, including Obama and Merkel

French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s triumphant march to the Elysée was paved with a promise to ignore formality. To his credit, that style has helped deliver some reformist victories at home. But that undiplomatic swagger can also get Sarkozy into trouble — especially when he talks trash about foreign leaders. That’s exactly what happened this week when French daily Libération revealed that Sarkozy had delivered some astonishingly unflattering comments about several foreign officials — including American President Barack Obama. During a lunch with a group of French legislators Wednesday, Sarkozy reportedly described Obama as inexperienced, ill-prepared by advisers, and thus far “not always up to standard on decision-making and efficiency.” And those turned out to be relatively kind words. Sarkozy said German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been reluctantly forced by economic realities to copy his own policies for dealing with the recession. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, said the French President, was simply “not very clever.” – From Time