Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused of using a video conference with Barack Obama to boost his election campaign.
In an unprecedented move in French diplomacy, newscasts on several TV channels showed the first few minutes of a video link-up between the French president and his US counterpart.
Days before the first-round vote in the French presidential election, on 22 April, the rare glimpse of banter between world leaders shows Obama saying of the campaign: "It must be a busy time." He adds: "I admire the tough battle you are waging." Sarkozy replies, grinning, with arms folded: "We will win, Mr Obama. You and me, together." The cameras leave before the pair talk about Syria, Iran and oil.
The Socialist party accused Sarkozy of breaking diplomatic protocol and embarrassing France on the world scene to boost his struggling campaign for re-election, saying the images "weakened France's credibility in Washington and across the world".
The SNJ-CGT journalists' union, at the state broadcaster France Télévisions, condemned the "grotesque communications operation" by Sarkozy, calling it a "surrealist sequence" of electoral media strategy.
French media wondered if the White House knew the footage would be made public, or whether Obama was set up.
Washington told Le Monde it had been aware that cameras were authorised to film the first few minutes of the conference.
Later, Sarkozy and his Socialist challenger in the elections, François Hollande, staged competing open-air rallies in Paris to try to boost momentum.
Sarkozy, took to a vast stage in the Place de la Concorde, where Louis XVI was guillotined after the French revolution and where the right celebrated Sarkozy's election victory in 2007. In a speech peppered with references to the world financial crisis, he appealed to the "silent France that suffers and never complains", saying the choice at the election would define "the direction of France" at a time of great turmoil.
At the risk of irking European partners, including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, he said he would force a debate on the role of the European Central Bank and how it could boost growth. This echoed one of Hollande's proposals for a change to Europe's approach to the crisis.
Sarkozy's emotive speech in front of tens of thousands was a last-ditch drive to boost morale. Recent polls showed Hollande climbing again in the first-round vote while Sarkozy's modest gains of the past month have started to recede, despite his warnings that France would face the economic catastrophe of Greece or Spain if he were not re-elected.
An Ifop poll showed that Sarkozy, with popularity ratings of 36%, is the most unpopular French president to stand for re-election in the history of the Fifth Republic.
Hollande, who, recent polls show, would comfortably win the second-round run-off on 6 May, addressed tens of thousands of supporters in front of Chateau de Vincennes, a castle in the east of the city which a mob of workers tried to raze in 1791. His speech which railed against "injustices" in France and vowed "to end privileges" was aimed at getting supporters out to vote amid a high risk abstention in the first-round vote.
His speech was also a round-up of his manifesto pledges to raise taxes on the richest and balance France's budget while also investing in education and state-assisted jobs for youth.
If Hollande wins the final run-off vote on 6 May, it would be first time the left has won the French presidency since Francois Mitterrand in 1988.
