Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the new First Lady of France, caused her husband more embarrassment yesterday when she was forced to apologise for comparing a leading left-of-centre news magazine with a Nazi journal.

In her first public comments since she became President Sarkozy’s third wife this month, she stumbled into a row by attacking Le Nouvel Observateur in terms described by Michel Labro, its Editor, as pathetic and idiotic. Within hours she issued a statement saying that she was “extremely sorry”.

The controversy came after a claim byLe Nouvel Observateur’s website that Mr Sarkozy wrote a text message to Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, his former wife, begging her to return. “Come back and I’ll cancel everything,” he is alleged to have written only eight days before his marriage to Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy.

Mr Sarkozy denies the claim and is suing the weekly – provoking a furious response from journalists and commentators, who said that the French head of state should not take legal action against the media.

His Italian-born wife – a former model turned singer-songwriter – stepped into the dispute in an interview with L’Express, another magazine. She suggested that Le Nouvel Observateur’s website was acting like a gossip magazine and added: “If this sort of website had existed during the war, how would they have treated the denunciation of Jews?”

The implication that Le Nouvel Observateur was comparable to Nazi publications – or at least those of the Vichy regime, which collaborated with Hitler’s war machine – sparked outrage. Mr Labro said: “You don’t play games with this sort of statement.”

He described Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy’s comments as “perfectly astonishing, rather incredible, pathetic and perfectly idiotic”. Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy responded with a full apology.

“I wrongly compared the methods used by websites to those of the collaborationist press. If I offended anyone, I am extremely sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to say how much I dislike these personal attacks, which cheapen information, and the potential danger that they represent.” The controversy is damaging because it threatens to derail her attempt to appease public anger over her husband’s private life.

With Mr Sarkozy’s ratings in freefall – largely because of incomprehension over his divorce in the autumn, high-profile romance with the millionaire supermodel and their marriage three months later – she sought to portray herself as a traditional, loving wife in the interview with L’Express.

“I wanted to marry him straight away,” she said. “People say it’s gone too quickly. That’s wrong: between Nicolas and me, it’s not quick enough. You know lovers go at their own pace. Ours is up-tempo.” Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy, who counts Sir Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, the rock stars, and Donald Trump, the US billionaire, among her former boyfriends, pledged that she would be faithful to her husband.

“I am of Italian culture and I would not like to divorce,” she said. “I am therefore First Lady until the end of my husband’s term of office and his wife until death. I know that life can reserve surprises but that is my wish.” Trying to play down her rock’n’roll reputation, she continued: “I don’t know yet what I can do as First Lady but I want to do it seriously. I’m 40 years old, normal, serious, conscientious, simple, even if I’m privileged.”

Read the Paris blog from Charles Bremner

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