Sarkozy Son Targeted By Threatening Phone Caller

The only child born to the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his ex-wife, Cecilia, has received threatening telephone calls, the French interior ministry said today.

The couple have two grown up children each from previous marriages, but 10-year-old Louis Sarkozy was the only minor affected by the couple's divorce in October of last year.

Last night the rumor-mill surrounding Sarkozy's relationship with the ex-supermodel Carla Bruni went into overdrive as a French regional newspaper reported on its website that the couple may have married in secret last Thursday.

Since the French president announced last week that the media would probably only hear about his marriage to Bruni after the ceremony had taken place, photographers and journalists have spent days darting between potential wedding locations trying to second-guess the couple.

L'Est Republicain reported on its website yesterday that Sarkozy may have married Bruni during a small private ceremony at the Elyse palace last week.

The newspaper, which was the only daily to get an interview with Cecilia Ciganer-Albaniz after her divorce from Sarkozy last year, quoted an unnamed source "close to a witness who attended the ceremony". The source said the wedding was a "small, very private" affair on Thursday afternoon.

The reporter told Agence France Presse he had had "good reasons" to run the story, but it was conditional as he had not personally attended the wedding himself. Other print journalists said their own sources denied it.

Sarkozy was on an official visit to Saudi Arabia and Qatar yesterday discussing plans for a permanent French military base in the Persian Gulf. He was not wearing a wedding ring and was not accompanied by Bruni.

His spokesman, David Martinon, refused to confirm or deny the reported secret wedding, saying he had "no comment". Speculation had centered on a low-key wedding before Sarkozy's official trip to India on January 24.