PARIS (EJP)---Bernard Kouchner, a pro-American Socialist politician, was named Friday foreign minister in French President Sarkozy's new government headed by rightist François Fillon.

Co-founder of the “Médecins Sans Frontières” (Doctors without borders) association and a former UN special representative in Kosovo, the 67-year-old Kouchner is one of France’s most popular politicians.

Kouchner, who backed President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Socialist rival Ségolène Royal during the recent election campaign, is one of the few French politicians who supported the US intervention in Iraq and is considered as an Atlanticist.

During the election campaign, he had called on his Socialists peers to move toward the political center and criticized the Left for not adapting itself to a changing world.

He has recently been forthright in his criticisms of human rights abuses in Darfur.

Kouchner’s nomination is seen in Paris as the consequence of the new President’s desire to forge a government rather “politically inclusive" than limited to his “close friends” from the Union for a Popular Movement or UMP governing party.

In his inauguration speech, Sarkozy said his international priorities were to combat human rights abuses and global warming.

Kouchner , who was born to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother, is an outspoken champion of human rights and a former health minister.

He trained as a gastro-enterologist in Paris, where he took part in the student protests of May 1968. His second wife is television presenter Christine Ockrent.

In a January 2004 interview, Kouchner lamented that the French had become "America-haters."

"We have turned (George W.) Bush into the big enemy as if that alone was a policy.... The French are America-haters, and they are also back being racists and anti-Semites. The French are sick in the head," he was quoted as saying.

Kouchner is close to UMP MP Pierre Lellouche, Sarkozy’s advisor on international issues, who sought the post of Defence Minister but was not included in the new 15-member downsized cabinet.

Honorary degree

Kouchner, who made several visits to Israel, received an honorary degree from Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba at the height of the second intifada.

However, the new foreign minister – who will lead the traditionally Gaullist and pro-Arab Quai d’Orsay foreign ministry- will apparently have a limited room for maneouvre by President Sarkozy’s intention to concentrate more powers within the Elysée palace.

Sarkozy has named Jean-David Levitte, an experienced diplomat, who is France’s ambassador in Washington, as his close diplomatic advisor.

Diplomatic advisor

Levitte, 60, a former advisor to former President Jacques Chirac, will head a diplomatic team in the presidential administration modelled on the US National Security Council.

Jean-David Levitte, France ambassador to the US, will become President Sarkozy's senior diplomatic advisor.

In May 2004, Levitte, who is Jewish, was quoted as calling Lebanese Hezbollah group mostly a “social” organisation. He also argued that there was no reason to put the group on the European Union’s terrorist list.

In an interview in 2006 with a Jewish American newspaper, Levitte, whose own grandparents were sent to Ausschwitz, defended France against charges of anti-Semitism, saying the French authorities had responded to anti-Semitic acts with strong measures.

The new French cabinet unveiled on Friday also sees another high-profile appointment: Rachida Data, a 41-year-old magistrate, who was Sarkozy’s spokeswoman during the election campaign, was named Justice Minister. She becomes the first politician of North African origin to hold a top government post.

New culture minister Christine Albanel, 51, currently director of the chateau of Versailles, is a former member of the board of the Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust which was until recently chaired by Simone Veil.

In another sign of Sarkozy’s wish to enlarge his presidential team, Jacques Attali, who was a senior advisor of former French Socialist President François Mitterrand, has been approached by the new president for a personal mission.

Jacques Attali was approached by Sarkozy for an economic mission.

A friend of Sarkozy, Attali has told journalists that he was “thinking about it.”

An economist, scholar and writer, Attali is president of PlanetFinance, an international non-governmental organisation that aims to alleviate poverty worldwide through the development of microfinance.