PARIS (Reuters) - Carla Bruni, the new wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, apologized on Wednesday for comparing the methods used by a French news magazine to those of the Nazi collaborationists during World War Two.
In her first media interview since marrying Sarkozy earlier this month, Bruni took aim at the Web site of left-leaning Nouvel Observateur magazine, which had suggested the president wanted to get back together with his previous wife.
"If this type of Web site had existed during the war, I wonder if it would have denounced Jews," Bruni said in her interview with LExpress magazine, published on Tuesday.
Nouvel Observateur said the remark was "quite extraordinary and pathetic" and Bruni immediately sought to calm the row.
"If I upset anyone, I am extremely sorry," Bruni said in a statement, published on LExpresss Web site -- http://www.lexpress.fr/info/quotidien/actu.asp?id=465869 .
"I just wanted to say how badly I view these personal attacks, which degrade reporting," she added.
Nouvel Observateur said last week that Sarkozy had sent a text message to his former wife Cecilia, eight days before his marriage to Bruni, promising to "drop everything" if she returned to him.
He has denied the report and took the unprecedented step for a French president of launching legal action for forgery and use of forged materials -- a criminal charge which could result in prison terms for the magazines editors if proven.
Nouvel Observateur has stood by the story and the stand-off with Sarkozy has underscored increasingly poor relations between the president and the French press.
In her lengthy interview with LExpress, Bruni leapt to her husbands defense and denied that their marriage was too hasty.
Sarkozy and Bruni, an Italian supermodel-turned-singer, wed just three months after first meeting and a mere four months after the president wrapped up a painful divorce from Cecilia.
"Things between Nicolas and me werent quick, they were immediate. Therefore, as far as we were concerned things moved quite slowly," Bruni said.
(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; editing by Keith Weir)
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