France's Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie offered her resignation to President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday, saying she could no longer let "political and media attacks" against her discredit France's foreign policy.
The 64-year-old minister, who had only been in the post since November, insisted she had broken no laws in accepting during a vacation to Tunisia in December flights and hospitality from an ally of the Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali just before he was overthrown. Since then she had been the center of a raging constroversy.
Hours later, Sarkozy himself announced a reshuffle of the French government in a televised address on foreign affairs and especially on the popular uprisings in several Arab countries, after critics have faulted the government's response to the recent turmoil.
The president replaced Alliot-Marie with former Prime Minister and outgoing Defence Minister Alain Juppe.
"On the other side of the Mediterranean, an immense upheaval is underway," Sarkozy declared, in his a brief address.
"By setting democracy and freedom against all forms of dictatorship, these revolutions open a new era. This change is an historic one, and we should not be afraid of it," he said.
"We should have one goal: to help these people who have chosen to be free."
The reshuffle came only three months after Sarkozy's last one, on November 14, which was supposed to give him the winning team with which he could fight the looming 2012 presidential election.
But the Arab uprisings, which have deposed friends of Paris, including Tunisia's Zine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, caught French diplomacy off guard and undermined the government.
Alliot-Marie has been the focal point for criticism. First of all she made a not very diplomatic offer for France to help Tunisian riot police in their task of quelling popular revolt there on January 11.
Then it emerged she had holidayed in former colony Tunisia during the uprising, using the private jet of a businessman allegedly linked to Ben Ali's regime, from whom her parents also bought a stake in a company.
"I ask you to accept my resignation," she wrote in a letter which begins with a handwritten "Dear Nicolas".
"For the last two weeks, it is my family's private life that has been suffering real harassment at the hands of certain media.
"I cannot accept that some people use this cabal to try to make people believe in a weakening of France's international policy."
For Sarkozy, the need to create a new platform from which he can relaunch himself during his presidency of the G8 and G20 has become urgent.
The Socialist opposition said Sunday ahead of her resignation that Alliot-Marie's departure was "a fairly logical end" but "the trouble with French foreign policy is Nicolas Sarkozy."
Sarkozy's "foreign policy has marginalised us not only in the Arab world but also in sub-Saharan Africa," said Socialist party spokesman Benoit Hamon, because of what he called a "failure" and "complete fiasco".
Criticism has even come from within the French diplomatic corps.
An open letter from a group of diplomats published in daily Le Monde slammed the "amateurism" and "impulsiveness" of Sarkozy's policy. Former ambassador Jean-Christophe Rufin criticized the "damage" done to France's image.
Juppe will be replaced as defence minister by Gerard Longuet, the leader of Sarkozy's centre right party in the French Senate, the president announced.
Sarkozy's chief of staff, Claude Gueant, will become Interior Minister, charged with restoring the government's reputation as tough on crime with a view to the expected 2012 re-election bid.