Rainbow Cabinet

Paris

France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, radically overhauled French politics this week, naming the most diverse Cabinet the country has ever seen. Sarkozy cut the number of ministerial posts in half, to 15, and gave seven of them to women. Allies of his two presidential rivals got plum jobs. Hervé Morin, who is close to centrist Francois Bayrou, will be defense minister; Bernard Kouchner, a member of Ségolène Royal’s Socialist party, will be foreign minister. The new justice minister, the half–Algerian, half–Moroccan Rachida Dati, will be the highest–ranking person of North African descent ever in French government. “I am of course proud of this government,” Sarkozy said. “It is an open, efficient government.”