MAIL ONLINE: Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama appeared inseparable as they went to extraordinary lengths last night to defuse speculation of a chilly relationship.
Mr Obama repeatedly referred to Mr Sarkozy by his first name during the French President's first Washington visit and spoke fondly of his trip to Paris last year.
'We respect one another and understand one another,' Mr Obama said. Obama and Sarkozy can't stop smiling at each other as they agree they are 'inseparable' in their thinking over Iran >>> Mail Foreign Service | Wednesday, March 31, 2010
THE INDEPENDENT: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy turned up the heat on her first trip to Washington as France's first lady, visiting a school in a poor neighbourhood and lunching at Ben's Chili Bowl.
The ex-top model later met US first lady Michelle Obama for dinner with their husbands - behind firmly closed doors in the Obamas' private residence quarters in the White House, leaving the curious guessing about how the glamorous four got along and whether their children joined them.
The White House put such a clamp on the dinner details that not even the menu was released.
Youngsters at Washington's KIPP DC charter school were over the moon at their visitor and her entourage of bodyguards and serenaded her with Ain't No Mountain High Enough.
Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy read them a book from the Madeline series about a girl living in France - in English, which the Italian-born French first lady speaks fluently. When eighth-graders asked her about her favourite museum she responded, to their delight: "If you come to Paris I'll bring you to the Louvre and I'll show you the Mona Lisa, and then we'll go to the restaurant."
Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy, who took up a singing career after quitting the catwalk and is now active in foundations fighting illiteracy and Aids, had surprised pupils at Juilliard Music School with a visit the day before in New York. >>> Associated Press | Wednesday, March 31, 2010
