Sarkozy regrets outburst but no apology
PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said heshould have resisted the temptation to swear at a criticalbystander at a trade fair at the weekend but stopped short ofapologising in a newspaper interview on Tuesday.
A much-viewed video of the clash posted on Le Parisien'sWeb site showed him using an insult when a man in the crowd atan agricultural fair refused to shake his hand on Saturday.
"It is difficult even when you are the president not torespond to an insult," Sarkozy told a panel of Le Parisien'sreaders in an interview which the newspaper said was arrangedwell before the weekend.
"Just because you are the president doesn't mean you becomea doormat. That said, I would have done better not to reply tohim."
The admission failed to put an end to the controversy aftera senior editor at Le Parisien, Dominique de Montvalon, toldCanal Plus television Sarkozy had never uttered the lastsentence and that it had been added by the president's officeafterwards.
The interviewing panel "find in the newspaper somethingwhich the president never said, which they never heard",Montvalon said, adding the newspaper would on Wednesday publishthe original version of the interview.
Sarkozy's office said that while the phrase might not havebeen said, it corresponded to the president's state of mind.
The exchange between Sarkozy and the unidentified man cameat a time when opinion polls show the president's popularity at36 percent, its lowest since his May 2007 election and down 19points in just three months.
In the interview Sarkozy brushed off the polls, which havealso shown Prime Minister Francois Fillon eclipsing his boss.
"You can't believe that when the polls are good thateverything is going well and that when the polls are bad,everything is going badly," he said.
"My vision of the role of the president is not to cultivatefriendship, to be the friend that you would dream of having."
His aim was rather to act on all fronts to shake up Franceand get results, he said.
"It is my duty to be hyperactive to wake up a country whichwas dozing," Sarkozy said.
"If I don't bang the table, if I don't demand results,nothing happens."
(Additional reporting by Laure Bretton; Editing by MatthewJones)