FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy's wife once said it would be "boring" to be France's First Lady.

Since her husband took office nearly three months ago, Mrs Cecilia Sarkozy has certainly put her own twist on the role.

Mrs Sarkozy, a willowy 49-year-old former model, accepts the spotlight only grudgingly, and always on her terms.

She went to Libya last month as a presidential emissary, arriving at a particularly sensitive moment in the European Union's prolonged effort to secure the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of infecting Libyan children with the HIV virus.

She met the prisoners and the families of the afflicted children, as well as Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi - twice. Shortly after that first trip, and during her second, the medics were freed after eight years behind bars.

Critics have denounced the deal brokered by Mr Sarkozy and the EU, which they say involves a 296 million euro (S$619 million) weapons contract and a nuclear reactor in return for the release of the medical workers. Some EU officials have also privately expressed exasperation at what they regard as a "gatecrash" by Mrs Sarkozy to steal their glory in a diplomatic triumph.

She flew from Libya to Bulgaria, on a French plane, with the liberated prisoners. But when Bulgarian officials went looking for her to appear at a celebratory press conference, they found that the enigmatic First Lady had already slipped away and gone home.

It was vintage Cecilia. She left her first husband, a well-known television personality, six months after the birth of their second child, to be with Mr Sarkozy, who was also married at the time but avidly pursuing his new love interest.

The two married a few years after they left their spouses. But she walked out on Mr Sarkozy in 2005 and was photographed on the arm of a French businessman in New York. She returned to Mr Sarkozy's side in time to play a behind-the-scenes role in his presidential election campaign. But she did not show up to vote in May and was absent from his victory dinner.

"She's like the heroine in a Greek tragedy," said an unnamed friend, in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur magazine last week. "She always dreams of being somewhere else, but she also can't imagine not being where she is."

Her high-profile mission to Libya created a sensation. "Cecilia Sarkozy: Mission Accomplished," proclaimed a Spanish newspaper. The Swiss press lyrically
compared her to Lady Diana and Jacqueline Kennedy.

But in France, there was unease over the First Lady's venture into foreign affairs.

A cartoon in the influential Le Monde newspaper showed Mr Sarkozy starting to introduce himself to Mr Gaddafi. "I know," says the Libyan leader, cutting off the French President. "You're Cecilia's husband."

As a leading Socialist parliamentarian, Mr Arnaud Montebourg, put it, Mrs Sarkozy has "no institutional status and no mandate" to act on behalf of the French government.

President Sarkozy has brushed aside such criticism. He praised his wife effusively for her Libya venture. She is pondering what kind of role she will play as First Lady and her happiness, he said, "is my only concern".