Sarkozy calls wife's role remarkable

Nicolas Sarkozy shrugged off accusations of grandstanding over the six Bulgarian medical workers freed by Libya, who arrived home after a last-minute intervention by his wife Cécilia.

The president praised her role as "quite remarkable." But asked exactly what she had done he replied: "It's not a new form of diplomacy". He added: "What counts is the result. There was a problem to resolve, we have resolved it. There's no point theorising over the status of the wife of the head of state."

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Euro-MP and Green party leader, complained: "Sarkozy just wanted to find something for Cécilia to do so she had a reason to exist. What we are witnessing is this couple's therapy."

Ms Sarkozy, who left her husband for several months in 2005, and who once said the idea of being France's first lady bored her, has yet to decide what official role she will play. "Cécilia's models are Cherie Blair or Hillary Clinton," said a presidential spokesman.

There was also criticism from anonymous sources in Brussels that Ms Sarkozy, a former model, had been despatched to Tripoli in a brazen attempt to steal the limelight. But European commission officials called the effort "European-wide," saying that France had already agreed to treat some of the HIV-positive children at the heart of the affair. "Different countries were involved in different ways in different phases," a spokesperson said.

The release was the result of years of negotiations by the commission and individual governments, including Britain during its last EU presidency.

Mr Sarkozy said an agreement between France and Libya over cooperation on a civil nuclear energy programme had "absolutely nothing to do" with the prisoner affair. But Le Parisien suggested France had acted out of self-interest. "Why did Paris get involved? ... because Libya is part of its traditional zone of influence but the French have been losing ground since 2003 when Gadafy chose to deal with the Americans and British," it wrote. "Sarkozy wants to reinstall [France] in a country where everything needs rebuilding after the years of the [UN] embargo, and which is overflowing with oil."

Diplomats in Tripoli said Ms Sarkozy and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU's Austrian external relations commissioner, had held "tough negotiations" before the final deal was done. Libya sought and obtained French equipment for a hospital in Benghazi as well as a two-page statement from the EU about their future relations.