Nicolas Sarkozy, a self-declared "friend of America", yesterday promised France he would not be the US president’s poodle and would oppose any repeat of the Iraq war.

The right-wing interior minister and presidential hopeful has been blasted by his critics as a kowtowing Atlantist and US-style neoconservative since his visit to George Bush last year when he declared his passion for the American way of life and criticised French "arrogance" in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003. [more]