French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday dropped a heavy hint he was preparing to marry Italian singer and former model Carla Bruni, but he avoided announcing a wedding date.
Sarkozy, 52, was asked at a news conference about his romance with Bruni after the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper reported on Sunday that the couple could wed on February 9, only two months after they met at a party in November. "It's serious. But it isn't the JDD which will fix the date," Sarkozy said, adding: "There is a strong chance that you'll learn about it when it's already happened."
Sarkozy's whirlwind relationship with the glamorous 40-year-old Bruni has fascinated the French media since the pair were photographed at Disneyland Paris last month, just weeks after his divorce from his second wife Cecilia.
Bruni, the daughter of an Italian tyre magnate, was one of the world's top fashion models during the 1990s before beginning a successful career as a singer.
She has been romantically linked to several famous men, including rock stars Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, US property tycoon Donald Trump and France's Socialist former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius. Following their first outing in public, glossy magazines have devoted lavish picture spreads to the couple, in sunglasses and jeans on holiday in Egypt and Jordan.
Speculation that a wedding was in the offing was fuelled at the weekend by the report in the JDD, owned by a businessman with close links to the president. Sarkozy's comments on the relationship had been the most eagerly awaited issue at the news conference and he joked that he was surprised that it took until the second question for a reporter to ask:
As in many other areas, the restless Sarkozy has broken firmly with the tradition by which politicians kept their private lives discreet and were left alone by the press. But recent opinion polls, which have shown a drop in his approval ratings, have suggested that the public may be tiring of the heavy publicity surrounding the relationship.
A survey in the leftwing daily Liberation on Monday showed 63 percent of those questioned felt Sarkozy showed off his private life too much but the president said it was not his fault that the media followed his every move.
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