PARIS, (Reuters) – President Nicolas Sarkozy is betting on one of France’s most tested politicians to restore credibility to French diplomacy at a crucial time for relations with North Africa and his own popularity ratings.
Sarkozy, who faces a pasting from the left if he runs for re-election in 2012, named veteran conservative Alain Juppe as foreign minister yesterday after Michele Alliot-Marie quit over her bungled handling of the Tunisia crisis.
An experienced technocrat who was a deft foreign minister in the 1990s, Juppe is a smart choice to repair the damage done by
