French politics may be getting a little dirtier - or at least a bit more intrusive. James caught us all up recently on Bikinigate: paparazzi photos of French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal in her bikini on a beach near Cannes. Now comes the revelation that while Royal was vacationing, her family's flat in Paris was ransacked - and not a thing was stolen. With the race to succeed Chirac next year heating up, Royal thinks supporters of her main rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, are behind the break-in. 

Mme Royal, 52, said: "This was not a burglary, but an intrusion and a full-scale search of my home in which nothing was stolen. Everything was turned upside down, the cupboards were emptied." Police said that the intruders had broken in through a window in the ground-floor flat and ripped the telephone wires out of the wall. ...[Royal] added that she had asked for the security of the telephone lines to be checked, implying that they might have been tapped.

At least one police officer has played down the possibility that it was an official job, remarking:

When a secret service carries out a job, it doesn't leave any trace behind, or it makes its intervention look like a burglary."

It turns out that the French were planning to announce that they were only sending a token force last night. But then the UN—fearful of the "devastating effect" this would have on other potential contributors—secured a postponement of the announcement. (All the quotes here are from this Le Monde article, which a kindly Frenchman has translated for us.) The shift in France's position is...

...motivated, according to a senior military official, by "the trauma of Bosnia" and "fears of retaliation from Syria or Iran" - two regimes which support Hezbollah and against which France is leading diplomatic battles." 

To an extent, the French position is understandable. The mission won't be under Chapter 7, its purpose is fuzzy, and the Lebanese army isn't planning to disarm Hezbollah. That means either the French will have to perform this task—which won't be easy—or there's a good chance that hostilities between the IDF and Hezbollah will resume, leaving the French army "having nothing but hits to take," as a military source put it to Le Monde. 

Today, after a begging call from Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac announced that France will dispatch 200 more troops to Lebanon. But France won't decide on whether to deploy in large numbers until the mission, the terms of engagement, and the proposed composition of the force have been clarified. That creates a classic chicken and egg situation because—as a UN civil servant told Le Monde—"European countries and the Muslim countries, everyone is waiting for France."

You know things are heating up in French politics when even les grandes vaccances are not sacred. This is the last summer before the 2007 presidential election and the two front runners are both indulging in some seaside electioneering. First, Nicolas Sarkozy, the likely candidate of the right, published Témoignage, which both sets out his political credo and deals—unusually for a French politician—with his personal life, including the breakdown and revival of his marriage. The book shot to the top of the best-seller lists and became the must-have beach read of the summer.

Sarko bested his likely opponent Ségolène Royal, whose book is due out in September, by pushing forward the publication date to take advantage of the fact that "the only time the French talk politics with their family is during the holidays." Sarko has even headed onto the dunes to sign copies. All this was combined with a blitz of the beaches by his UMP party.

But now Ségo has stolen some of Sarko's thunder: She's been snapped by the paparazzi in her bikini. Seeing as Ségo is apparently the 6th sexiest woman in the world, this isn't likely to harm her numbers. The intriguing question, as The Times’s man in Paris, Charles Bremner, points out, is will she sue? Under France's privacy laws she's entitled to. But seeing as Sarko isn't shy of using the snappers to get his message across—recent shots of him and his wife kissing confirmed their reconciliation—Ségo might be happy to let this fly. The recent sacking of the editor of Paris Match for publishing photos of Sarko's wife with her lover, though, shows that these things can cut both ways.

Last night's Israeli raid on Hezbollah facilities in Baalbek was a sign of things to come. The Israeli Defense Force has a doctrine that Israel cannot afford to lose a single war. They believe that a defeat, or even the absence of a victory, would invite attack from all of Israel's enemies. So, the Israelis will not accept a cease-fire until they have scored an unequivocal triumph. I think this is what explains Israel's decision to launch such a daring raid last night and why we will see more such activity over the next few days.  

Ehud Olmert knows that, whatever he says about Israel's success in destroying terrorist infrastructure, if Hezbollah can fire a record 220 rockets into Israel in a day, a cease-fire now would be viewed as a victory for Hezbollah.  

Meanwhile, the reputation of the French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy took another blow when, days after he declared that Iran is "a great country, a great people, and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region," the Supreme Leader in Iran pronounced that the "American regime must expect a hard slap and a destructive punch by the Islamic nations for its support of Zionist criminals." And then there's this: The German newspaper Die Welt is reporting that Iran has freed Osama bin Laden's son and sent him to the Syrian-Lebanese border to recruit terrorist cells. One dreads to think what a country intent on destabilizing the region might do next.

As calls increase for a multinational force that could police the Israel-Lebanon border, there appears to be less hand-raising and more finger-pointing. The US and UK won't send troops because they're overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Israelis won't accept the usual UN rent-a-force full of untrained soldiers just out for a paycheck. And no matter who goes, the timing and size of the deployment is sure to be a political minefield in most countries. So just who will step up and monitor a possible cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israeli soldiers? In this week's List, FP takes a look at the countries that might supply the boots on the ground.

French President Jacques Chirac used his Bastille Day interview to criticize Israel's response as "totally disproportionate." Yet in a speech earlier this year, Chirac announced that France was prepared to nuke any country that sponsored a terrorist attack against its interests. In the interview Chirac also declared: "But I have the sentiment, if not the conviction, that the Hamas, the Hezbollah could not have taken these initiatives completely alone. And therefore, that there is support somewhere from this or that nation." So, logically he couldn't call even an Israeli nuclear strike on Iran and Syria disproportionate. Unless that is, there's one rule for France and one for everybody else. Guess those French principles aren't so universal after all.

With everyone's attention focused on Germany for the World Cup, it's easy to forget that there's another world-class sporting event about to take place just across the border. The world's greatest cycling race, the Tour de France, begins this Sunday in Strasbourg. With seven-time champ Lance Armstrong retired, there's been great excitement to see who else can don the yellow jersey. Now, the field has opened even wider for someone truly unexpected to win. Just a few hours ago, two of the favorites were banned from racing. Germany's Jan Ullrich and Italy's Ivan Basso are embroiled in a doping scandal. In May, Spanish police carried out raids, seizing drugs and frozen blood that was thought to be used in doping. This week, various teams withdrew competitors whose names have surfaced. The plus side: someone truly unexpected will win this year's Tour. The down side: Is there no sport anywhere that's untainted by drugs? It's all so depressing, really.

The French political establishment will be choking on their brioche this morning. Not only will the next presidential election likely be a contest between a woman and the son of an immigrant, but the masses find the female candidate to be as attractive physically as she is politically. A poll in the French edition of FHM places Socialist Ségolène Royal as the sixth sexiest women in the world. The Daily Telegraph reports that the "52-year-old mother of four" beat out Penelope Cruz and Jennifer Lopez.

Royal's success is evidence of the buzz surrounding her possible candidacy, and it is only going to get louder. I was chatting to a Paris-based journalist last week and there is real excitement about how fun it would be to cover a "Sego" v. "Sarko" race—it is the match-up the media crave. The polls show that it's also the contest the public wants. But, as The Economist notes, in the history of the Fifth Republic, no poll has correctly predicted the final two candidates a year out.

All the signs, though, suggest that France is at long last ready for real change, perhaps validating the thesis that the rejection of modest labor liberalization earlier this year was, counter-intuitively, good for the reformist cause. 2007 is shaping up to be a vintage year for French politics.

I really should be writing an item for the magazine's Inbox section right now, but this de Villepin story is just too juicy not to blog. For those who want to get caught up on what they’re unimaginatively calling the "French Watergate" (to the certain dismay of the Académie française), the BBC have a handy timeline.

De Villepin has come out fighting, denying all the charges and telling the National Assembly: “I've been the victim in recent days of a terrible campaign of slander and lies, a campaign which has profoundly shocked and wounded me.” Meanwhile, Sarkozy has signed onto a law suit by those named in the forged document claiming “slanderous denunciation.”

Ironically, if de Villepin does have to resign, Sarko could be the real loser. As Charles Bremner, The Times (London) correspondent in Paris who has been all over this story, points out, a new PM could steal some of the limelight away from Sarko ahead of the ’07 presidential election. And who knows, maybe even become a viable rival to him which de Villepin, who is edging ever closer to having the lowest approval rating of any prime minister in the history of the fifth republic, is certainly not.