French minister defends offer of security forces to Tunisia

Michèle Alliot-Marie says offer to help control Tunisia's uprising was 'misrepresented'

guardian.co.uk, Kim Willsher in Paris, Tuesday 18 January 2011

The French foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, has defended her controversial offer to help Tunisia's deposed president restore order a few days before he was ousted.

The French foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie,
discusses Tunisia at the Assemblée Nationale.
 Photograph: Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Images

Alliot-Marie had been summoned to explain her remarks, made last week, to the Assemblée Nationale's foreign affairs commission. The cabinet minister had offered to share the expertise of French security forces "recognised throughout the world" to help control the uprising.

Since Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia on Friday, France has attempted to distance itself from the former leader, refusing him exile and ordering a block on his family's property and money held in France.

Today Alliot-Marie fended off opposition calls for her resignation and told parliamentarians that France, along with other countries, had "not seen events coming. Let's face it, we were all of us - politicians, diplomats, researchers, journalists - taken by surprise by the jasmine revolution," Alliot-Marie said.

She said her offer had been "misrepresented" and that it was aimed at helping the Tunisian people, not propping up repression. "I'd spent the night in an aeroplane and it's possible I did not express myself well. I began to doubt myself, but afterwards I re-read my proposal to see that it was what actually what I thought and not what was being interpreted by certain people."

She added she was "scandalised" by how her comments had been distorted.

Earlier it looked as if Alliot-Marie was being isolated by the Élysée Palace after an adviser of the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, suggested she was expressing "her own analysis of the situation".