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Alain Juppe becomes France’s foreign minister

28 February 2011 07:38 (UTC +04:00)

Strasbourg. Fuad Gulubeyli â€“ APA. Franceâ€™s Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie sent her resignation to President Nicolas Sarkozy. French newspapers reported about the upcoming resignation of the foreign minister last week, APA European bureau reports. Alliot-Marie had only been in the post since November, but became the center of controversial disputes for her vacation in Tunisia in December. A recent poll showed a double-digit drop in Alliot-Marie’s popularity after reports that she had accepted a free ride in Tunisia on a jet owned by a Tunisian businessman who had ties to former President Zine Ben Abidine Ben Ali’s family. Her aging parents also signed a real estate deal with a businessman allegedly close to the fallen regime. The foreign ministerâ€™s controversial Tunisian vacation and latest developments in the neighbor Arab countries forced French President Nicolas Sarkozy to shuffle his Cabinet’s top diplomatic and security posts. Defense Minister Alain Juppe replaced Alliot-Marie in the post of France’s top diplomat. The president appointed former minister Gerard Longuet, who heads Sarkozy’s conservative party in the Senate, to take up the defense ministerâ€™s office. Claude Gueant, formerly Sarkozy’s chief of staff, was named interior minister in place of Brice Hortefeux â€” long one of Sarkozy’s top lieutenants and political allies.