Taking office, Sarkozy speaks of 'old France' history, values

PARIS -- President Nicolas Sarkozy took office promising to create a new France, rooted in pride in the values of an "old France" of hard work, discipline, patriotism and self-sacrifice.

After the traditional, rather stiff ceremony of inauguration...Sarkozy added a gut-wrenching speech paying tribute to young resistance martyrs of the Second World War..

He said his first act as president would be to order the final letter home of a condemned resistance hero to be read out to all French schoolchildren aged 15 to 18 each September...

During the campaign, M. Sarkozy had implicitly criticised the outgoing president, Jacques Chirac, for adopting what he called a "posture of repentance": apologising for dark periods in France's past, such as the role of the French state in the Holocaust.

By going to a resistance shrine in the Bois de Boulogne as one of his first acts as president, M. Sarkozy signalled that he plans to resurrect the very different post-war approach of his political hero, Charles de Gaulle. Like De Gaulle's France, Sarkozy's France will glorify acts of patriotism and achievement. It will not dwell on past failures, wickedness or betrayals.

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