FRANCE:President Nicolas Sarkozy was in Brussels yesterday to defend France's budget deficits in the eurogroup and to campaign for the former socialist finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn to be Europe's candidate for the post of managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
Mr Sarkozy is from the right, Mr Strauss-Kahn from the left. Back in Paris, the president's embrace of ever growing numbers of leading socialists has led to panic on the left and grumbling in his own UMP party.
Six left-wing figures (Bernard Kouchner, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, Eric Besson, Martin Hirsch, Fadela Amara and Jean-Marie Bockel) have committed the ultimate "treachery" of joining Mr Sarkozy's government.
Now that he has run out of ministers' portfolios, Mr Sarkozy is seducing others with missions and commissions. The president preys on leading socialists by telephoning them in person. Lesser leftists are contacted by the secretary general of the Élysée.
Only one - Christiane Taubira, from French Guyana - is known to have resisted Mr Sarkozy's political advances. "She has principles," a source at the Élysée shrugged. What started as a poaching operation now looks more like open season on the socialist party.
The French use metaphors from the animal kingdom to describe Mr Sarkozy's ouverture (opening) to the left. François Bayrou, the failed centrist presidential candidate who originally pleaded for left and right to work together, said the president is acting "like a piranha in a goldfish bowl".
Le Monde newspaper compared Mr Sarkozy to a tom-cat playing with dead mice, but for their fellow party members, the socialists rallying to Mr Sarkozy's camp are more like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
Former socialist foreign minister Hubert Védrine is drafting a report on globalisation for Mr Sarkozy, while Jacques Attali, once top adviser to François Mitterrand, labours over a report on the reform of development aid.
Three socialist personalities - former minister Jack Lang and Olivier Schrameck and Guy Carcassone, both former advisers to socialist prime ministers - have been chosen for a commission on institutional reform.
Jean-Marc Ayrault, the president of the socialist group in the National Assembly, warned Mr Lang not to "go astray in an individual adventure" when his nomination was made public. Mr Lang retorted that he would boycott the socialist group as long as Mr Ayrault presided over it. He said he was "honoured and touched" to be chosen by Mr Sarkozy and would announce his decision after the president's speech on institutions on July 12th.
Even Jean Daniel, the editor-in-chief of the Nouvel Observateur magazine and the grand old man of the left-wing French press, appears to have succumbed to Mr Sarkozy's charms. Mr Daniel will be part of the president's delegation to Algiers and Tunis today and tomorrow.
But the courting of Mr Lang and Mr Strauss-Kahn really set the cat among the pigeons. Both are "elephants", long-time leaders of the left. After a debate in 2002, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Strauss-Kahn he hoped they would compete in this year's presidential race.
"DSK", as he is known, lost the socialist nomination to Ségolène Royal, but he remains one of few potential rivals to Mr Sarkozy on the left, and had promised to undertake the renewal of the beleaguered party.
Mr Sarkozy says he chose to support Mr Strauss-Kahn for the IMF job because he combines credibility and experience and is multi-lingual. (Mr Strauss-Kahn is fluent in French, English and German.) DSK's appointment would be in the national interest, he argues - but it would also be in the interest of Nicolas Sarkozy.
On holiday in Morocco, Mr Strauss-Kahn refused to comment. Pierre Moscovici, the former European affairs minister who is close to DSK, said the Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Junker had suggested him for the IMF position.
Socialist leader François Hollande denounced Mr Sarkozy's "confusion operations" but stressed the job was subject to international agreement "and is in no way a national decision whereby Nicolas Sarkozy would appoint or anoint someone".
The post "must not be used for domestic political ends", Mr Hollande warned.
"Sarkozy's ouverture is cynical, not idealistic," says a former right-wing minister. "He wants to destroy the socialist party before next year's municipal elections, which are the only threat to his total hold on power. There is no real ouverture; he's buying off individuals with positions, but he's not opening up to left-wing policies or ideas."