Nicolas Sarkozy succeeded Jacques Chirac as French president yesterday, promising to usher in an era of change and restore national pride.
At the start of ceremonies mixing republican pageantry and symbolic gesture, Sarkozy was inaugurated under the chandeliers of the Elysee Palace, which will be his home for the next five years following his comprehensive election victory on May 6.
In his first speech in the opulent Salle des Fetes, the 52-year old Sarkozy vowed not to disappoint the French people.
"I will defend the independence of France. I will defend the identity of France," said Sarkozy, the first French head of state to be born after World War II.
"There is a need to unite the French people ... and to meet commitments because never before has [public] confidence been so shaken and so fragile," he said in an apparent dig at Chirac, a former political mentor with whom he now has strained relations.
He also pledged to put the fight against global warming and the defense of human rights at the heart of his foreign policy.
Sarkozy first act after his speech was to greet family members, including his wife, Cecilia, who has hardly been seen in public this year fuelling speculation about their marriage.
Following a private lunch, Sarkozy rode in an opentop car up the Avenue des Champs Elysees, escorted by the mounted Republican Guard, and laid a floral tribute at the tomb of the unknown soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe.
Sarkozy plunged into the crowd to shake hands with well-wishers before laying wreaths at statues of France's World War I and World War II leaders -- Georges Clemenceau and General Charles de Gaulle.
He once again conducted a brief walkabout amid shouts of "Sarko" and "Nicolas" from the crowd.
Sarkozy was then driven to the Bois de Boulogne, a wooded park on the western edge of Paris, for a ceremony to commemorate 35 young French resistance fighters who were killed in a German ambush in August 1944.
Visibly moved when a girl recited a famous letter written by a 17 year-old Resistance member on the eve of his death, Sarkozy said the letter should be read out in schools at the start of every academic year.
He then headed off to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a trip aimed at underscoring the importance of Franco-German relations.
Sarkozy is widely expected to name moderate conservative Francois Fillon as his prime minister today, and draft centrists and high-profile leftists into a streamlined Cabinet which will probably be unveiled tomorrow.
Looking to reach across political divides, he is expected to name Bernard Kouchner, a Socialist former health minister and human rights campaigner, as his foreign minister.
Chirac, who ruled for 12 years, met Sarkozy in private to give him the launch codes for France's nuclear strike force. He then drove off into retirement, with Sarkozy applauding and waving goodbye from the Elysee Palace courtyard.
A 21-gun salute resounded near the tomb of the emperor Napoleon across the river Seine as Constitutional Council President Jean-Louis Debre proclaimed Sarkozy the sixth president of France's Fifth Republic.
"From this day on and for the duration of your mandate, you embody France, symbolize the republic and represent all the French people," Debre said.
Sarkozy inherits a fractured society, dispirited by years of high unemployment, and says he will take a more hands-on approach than his predecessor.
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