"It is becoming very important to get rid of the Quai d'Orsay … I have contempt for all these guys, they are cowards"

Quick to anger, [Nicolas Sarkozy] calls both his aides and political enemies unprintable vulgarities

writes Elaine Sciolino in her New York Times report on Yasmina Reza's upcoming book (Dawn Evening or Night) on Nicolas Sarkozy.

At a breakfast with French experts on Russia and Chechnya, he declares that the Foreign Ministry is useless. "It is becoming very important to get rid of the Quai d'Orsay," he says. Branding the previous French ambassador in Russia "a moron," and the ambassador in Lebanon "an infamous cretin," he adds, "I have contempt for all these guys, they are cowards."

In another scene he asks himself whether Ségolène Royal, his Socialist opponent, is helping his own chances, and replies, "It's not certain. It's not certain that being a zero is necessarily a disadvantage in France."