PARIS – Carla Bruni-Sarkozy declared on Wednesday that rumours about the state of her marriage to France's President Nicolas Sarkozy have no importance and are not part of a plot against them.
The French first lady was responding after several European newspapers reported rumours about the couple's private life, and after Sarkozy aides had alleged that unnamed forces are behind a deliberate smear campaign.
"These are insignificant rumours that count for nothing. We have never tried to fight them. These are rumours that are unpleasant, but which have no importance," she said, in an interview with Europe 1 radio.
"I don't think that we have been victims of any kind of plot. I think that rumours have always existed, that unfortunately they're part of being human," she explained, in her first public response to the scandal.
"We have decided, my husband and I, to not accord any importance to this. There is no plot. There will be no revenge. It's of no concern to us, and we turned the page on this a long time ago."
Bruni-Sarkozy was asked, why -- if there was no plot -- did Sarkozy's communications advisor Pierre Charon endorse a police investigation and suggest that foreign business interests were behind the rumours.
"Pierre Charon spoke with the urgency of friendship. He took it very much to heart. He took it more to heart than we did," she replied.
Further reports surfaced last week in the French press suggesting that the president suspected that his former justice minister, Euro MP Rachida Dati, had been involved in spreading the rumours.
But Bruni-Sarkozy also dismissed this idea.
"The accusation that Rachida Dati spread these rumours is another rumour. I therefore don't believe it .. and she remains entirely our friend," she said.
"Henceforth, I shall believe no more rumours. Rumours are false. Thus, I absolutely do not believe the rumour that Rachida Dati would have invented these rumours herself," she said.
Dati has also furiously denied spreading the rumours, describing the allegation as a smear and threatening legal action.
Last month, newspapers in Belgium, Britain, Germany and Switzerland reported rumours on the state of President Sarkozy's marriage to the former supermodel, following unsourced stories on some French Internet sites.
The rumours had been circulating in Parisian political and media circles for some weeks, but exploded into mainstream opinion via Twitter postings by journalists and a blog on the website of the Sunday newspaper Journal du Dimanche.
The Journal du Dimanche has since lodged a formal complaint with police, alleging that an employee of a firm subcontracted to provide online content, Newsweb, had injected "fradulent data" onto its site.
According to the news weekly Le Nouvel Observateur and the daily Le Monde, the Journal du Dimanche was pushed to make the complaint by Sarkozy's inner circle, wlthough his aides have denied this.
"The inquiry underway seeks to find out if those who put these rumours on the blogs did so on their own account or if they were put up to it, either by a cabal or an individual," Thierry Herzog, Sarkozy's lawyer, told RTL radio.
Since the post -- which went up in the night of March 9 and was rapidly taken down once editors became aware of it -- Newsweb's chief operating officer and the author of the post have both been forced to resign.
Both Herzog and Charon have suggested the rumours were planted.
"Now we'll see if there was a kind of organised plot, with financial transactions, why not?" Charon told the news website Rue89 at the weekend.
"The fact that these rumours were picked up in the press in Britain, Germany and Switzerland makes one suspect a plot, at a time when France is preparing, to assume the G20 presidency in 2011," he added.
France is expected to use its upcoming turn as head of the club of the world's richest nations to push for greater financial regulation.