French president's wife ready for divorce

PARIS -- Cecilia Sarkozy, France's first lady until this week, says she devoted 20 sometimes difficult years to her marriage with President Nicolas Sarkozy and was now looking forward to a normal life after their divorce.

In her second major interview since the announcement of the separation, Cecilia fronted the cover of glossy women's magazine Elle, which advanced its publication from Monday to Saturday.

"I devoted 20 years of my life to Nicolas, 20 years which were not always easy, far from it," said Cecilia, who became first lady after her husband's election win this year.

"Twenty years during which I devoted myself for him in the shadows. I didn't complain, I didn't listen to my own needs and I'm not a woman who complains," she said. "We were an ordinary couple in an extraordinary position, under extraordinary pressure and we couldn't resist it."

She said she had never felt comfortable surrounded by aides and chauffeurs in gilded presidential palaces and wanted a normal life for herself and her children.

"Maybe I'm not like other people, but what I miss above all is doing the shopping in the supermarket with my son Louis."

Cecilia's candour has contrasted with the attitude of her former husband who gave a tart rejoinder to a question on his divorce at a news conference on Friday, saying the French people were less interested than the media in his private life.

An opinion poll in the weekly Journal du Dimanche, issued ahead of publication, found 89 percent of those questioned thought the divorce was a purely personal matter and 76 percent thought it would not weaken Sarkozy.

The story has dominated the media for days, overshadowing a major transport strike on Thursday and causing some commentators to wonder whether the intense media scrutiny could affect the functioning of the government.