Last week, on her ninth visit to Afghanistan, Michèle Alliot-Marie, the French minister of defence, was such a familiar face in Kabul that the nickname that people use for her in Paris — based on her initials — was being uttered by Afghans as she walked along a rutted track to an orphanage, where she handed out blankets and kites.

Can the most powerful woman in the French government succeed in her ambition of making the name even more globally resonant?

The French Socialists have picked a woman for the first time as their presidential candidate and Alliot-Marie, 60, thinks that her centre-right party should do the same. So she is challenging Nicolas Sarkozy, the 51-year-old interior minister and boss of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), for the presidential nomination just when he thought that he would be unopposed.

Deploying another woman to take on Ségolène Royal, the charismatic Socialist, might seem logical, but Alliot-Marie still has a long way to go before convincing 300,000 party members that she has the best chance of beating Royal.

A formidable force in French politics, Sarkozy has been fantasising about his presidential coronation since childhood and will not be easily thwarted when he is so close to the prize.

Alliot-Marie is reluctant to use her sex as an electoral weapon but accepts that being a woman these days in French politics is a big advantage.

“People are saying we’ve had enough of you [male politicians] and we’re going to choose someone completely new,” said Alliot-Marie. “That is why, in spite of the weaknesses of her candidacy, Madame Royal obtained 60% of the Socialist vote.”

Sipping a glass of mineral water, Alliot-Marie was relaxing in a sand-coloured safari suit aboard her Airbus after a three-day visit to Kabul last weekend. “She [Royal] represents a new style, perhaps,” conceded the minister.

Yet Alliot-Marie has little reason to be impressed by the younger woman’s successes.Royal may have a better designer wardrobe and approval rating, but Alliot-Marie has greater responsibilities: nearby was the gendarme who follows her everywhere with a black pouch containing launch codes for the nuclear strike force. Also seated at her conference table on the flight back to Paris were admirals and generals eager to do her bidding.

There is no doubt that she has arrived at the top. “I already did in my party what Madame Royal has done with the Socialists,” she said, referring to the way she deflated male opposition to become the first female president of the Gaullist party, now the UMP, in 1999.

President Jacques Chirac once described her as “the nicest pair of legs in the party” but she has proved that she is a lot more, particularly since becoming defence minister in 2002.

The daughter of a former international rugby referee, she has become used to the rough and tumble of a military life on the road. On visits to Afghanistan, where France has 1,100 troops based in Kabul as part of the Nato-led international security assistance force, she is in and out of a flak jacket.

Explore World News

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Divided Kirkuk faces up to curse of oil
• Revenge killer hailed hero joins Ossetian war
• The perfect way to swat a fly: stay one jump ahead