(Haaretz).French President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "get rid" of hard-line Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Channel Two reported on Monday.The Foreign Ministry responded to the report by lambasting the French leader for his "intolerable intervention in internal Israeli affairs."
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Sarkozy spent a good portion of his meeting with Netanyahu last Wednesday discussing the composition of the Israeli official, according to the report.
The French president reportedly told Netanyahu that while he usually scheduled talks with Israel's top foreign envoys on visit to Paris he could not bring himself to meet with Lieberman."I have always accepted Israeli foreign ministers, and I loved to have Tzipi Livni here at the Elysee, but with (Lieberman) I can't," he was reported as saying with a wave of his hand. According to Channel Two, this statement was accompanied by disparaging hand gestures.
Sarkozy then advised Netanyahu to fire Lieberman and bring former foreign minister Tzipi Livni back into the coalition, according to the report. Netanyahu reportedly told Sarkozy that Lieberman came across differently in private than his public appearances would suggest.
French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen also comes across as a nice person in private, Sarkozy reportedly responded, to which Netanyahu replied that Lieberman was not Le Pen and that there was no basis for comparison. Sarkozy then responded that he did not intend to compare.
The prime minister's bureau did not respond to Sarkozy's remarks nor deny them, but the office of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman did respond with a strong condemnation.
"If the words attributed to the president of France are correct, the interference of a president of a respected democratic state in the matters of another democratic state is a grave and intolerable thing. We expect that that regardless of political stance, every political body in Israel will condemn this callous attack by a foreign state in our domestic affairs."