New details have emerged about Prime Minister Binaymin Netanyahu’s meeting last week with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that paint a picture slightly less cordial than the one presented at Wednesday’s press conference, in which the premier described his visit as a demonstration of an “unbreakable bond.”
According to Channel 2, in the closed-door meeting, Sarkozy told Netanyahu that he “needs to get rid of” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
“You need to get rid of this man,” the French president reportedly said. “You need to remove him from this position.”
Sarkozy had apparently taken issue with some of Lieberman’s fringe political stances, Channel 2 reported, and he said that opposition Leader Tzipi Livni was a far better choice for the position of foreign minister. In response, Netanyahu was quoted as telling the French leader that Lieberman “sounds really different” in private conversations.
The French president, undeterred, reportedly retorted that even Jean-Marie Le Pen is a nice person in private conversations. Le Pen, the founder and president of the National Front party in France, is considered by many to hold somewhat extreme right-wing political views.
The Prime Minister’s Office denied the report, while a Lieberman aide blasted the comments.
“If the words attributed to the French president are correct, then the intervention of the president of a respected, democratic state in the affairs of another democratic state is a grave and unacceptable thing,” he said. “We expect that – regardless of political affiliation – all political bodies in Israel condemn this callous intervention of a foreign state in our internal affairs.”
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