She said there was a difference between an "alliance with the Americans" and "alignment" with Bush and his policies.

"My diplomatic position will not consist of going and kneeling down in front of George Bush," she said.

A trailing left-wing presidential hopeful, Laurent Fabius, has also mocked Sarkozy as Bush's "poodle".

Sarkozy's supporters, however, said the meeting showed that Sarkozy, who has unashamedly brandished pro-US credentials, was being taken seriously on the world stage.

The interior minister - who has even called himself 'Sarko the American' - certainly made segments of the US media swoon, especially after a speech in which he lauded the United States and blasted France's "arrogance".

The Washington Times newspaper said he had the "panache of a matinee idol" and saw in him "a new kind of Frenchman", one who would support US policies rather than oppose them.

The New York Daily News said: "Nicolas Sarkozy is determined to save France from its single biggest enemy - the French."

President Jacques Chirac, who has long been unable to control his ambitious interior minister, took umbrage at remarks Sarkozy also made suggesting Chirac went too far in blocking United Nations approval for the US-led war on Iraq in 2003.

On Monday, Chirac - who on Tuesday was to meet Bush himself before the two give separate addresses to the UN General Assembly - said his position has since been validated by the turn of events in Iraq.

"I adopted a stance on Iraq and I have to say that the way things panned out, it certainly didn't go against the stance I took. What I said has been borne out and I remain very pessimistic about Iraq and its future," Chirac told CNN television.

French newspaper Libération said Chirac was convinced that Sarkozy's overtures towards Bush would rile the French public and saw Sarkozy's speech as "irresponsible".

Although Chirac has not ruled out running for a third mandate in the presidential election due next April, at age 73 that looks unlikely.

Sarkozy and Royal, though not yet confirmed candidates, lead the pack of potential contenders. Polls put them neck-and-neck.

The most recent, carried out by the Ipsos institute and published last week, showed Sarkozy would beat Royal 52 percent to 48 percent in a run-off round if the election were held now.

The children's mother discovered their bullet-ridden bodies alongside that of her husband early Tuesday morning, at their home in the village of Bouge-Chambalud in the southeastern Alps, the local mayor said.

She had spent the night away from home after a fight with her husband, a 43-year-old employee at a local chemicals factory, according to the mayor Jean Villard.

Ballistics experts were sent to the scene of the killing, which the mayor said was apparently linked to the couple's marital problems.

The tragedy comes a day after a similar incident, in which the father of three children, aged nine, six and four, stabbed them to death before hanging himself from a door handle.

The man, a computer technician from the northern town of Tourcoing, was in the process of divorcing his wife. The children had been staying with their father for the weekend.

In a third incident, the popular French daily France Soir reported that a man had shot dead his 10-year-old son before making a botched suicide attempt, in the western Brittany town of Lorient on Sunday.

The man, a Turkish immigrant in his 50s, was recently separated from his wife and had custody of his son for the weekend, the paper said.

The figure fell far short of meeting demands of campaigners, who dismissed it as a token gesture and vowed to fight on against plans to expel thousands of families under a toughening of French immigration policy.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said 6,924 adults - out of 30,000 who applied for the exceptional measure - would be allowed to remain in France with their children, in an interview to be broadcast on France 2 television.

"This is the final figure ... now we will return to the normal procedure," Sarkozy said. He did not say how many people in total - parents plus children - would be affected.

The French authorities agreed in June to examine residency applications from thousands of illegal immigrant families with children in French schools after parents, schoolteachers, rights groups and left-wing politicians mounted a grassroots campaign in their support.

The Education Without Borders Network (RESF) - which led the campaign against their deportation - said the amnesty was a mere "bluff", handled in a "totally arbitrary" manner.

RESF spokeswoman Brigitte Wieser said families were treated on a first come, first served basis, rather than on individual merit.

"This is causing a lot of anger, because people had placed a lot of hope" in the government, she said.

Cimade, an immigrant support group, said it too was "hugely disappointed".

"The number of people to benefit was fixed in advance by the ministry, before the prefectures even started examining the applications," charged the group's secretary-general Laurent Giovanonni.

"This is an electoral choice, not one taken in people's interests," she said.

"It is too little. It's a drop in the ocean," agreed Fidel Nitiema, a spokesman for a group of hundreds of illegal immigrants who were evicted from a squat near Paris last month.

Sarkozy - who has championed a tough line towards France's estimated 200,000 to 400,000 illegal immigrants - conceded that it was "hard to judge" individual cases, but insisted all were given a fair treatment.

"In France, decisions are not arbitrary," he said.

The minister - a frontrunner for next year's presidential elections in which immigration is shaping up as a major issue - repeatedly rejected campaigners' demands for a blanket amnesty.

Because no papers are needed to register a child in a French school, the government argued that to grant residency rights to all such families would create a new channel for immigration.

To qualify, at least one child had to be born in France or have arrived before the age of 13, he or she must have been at school in France for two years, and have no link with their country of origin.

Families also had to show they had "a real will to integrate" with French society, and that their children had stayed out of trouble with the law.

The government has vowed to step up the pace of deportations to 25,000 this year - from 15,000 in 2004 - and recently scrapped the automatic right to residency papers for migrants who have been in the country at least 10 years.

Sarkozy insisted in the interview that blanket immigrant amnesties in other European countries had proved to be a "catastrophe" and had led to "an explosion in demands" for immigration.

Half a million people are to benefit from a Italian amnesty this year, while Spain last year granted residency rights to 580,000 people. Around 80,000 were given residency rights under a previous Socialist government in France.

Overall, the trend was slowing, although the figures showed that some segments of the populations were more at risk than others, low-income earners most notably.

"All generations are affected, but we are becoming obese younger and younger, which raises fears of worsening and earlier consequences for the younger generations," said Professor Arnaud Basdevant, a Paris hospital nutritionalist who jointly coordinated the study.

Obesity is a problem for many countries. The World Health Organisation considers it an epidemic.

According to the French survey, obesity afflicted nearly one person in five earning under EUR 34,800 euros per year compared to just one person in 20 earning more than EUR 63,600.

Women appeared to be more affected than men by obesity.

The survey, the fourth in a triennial study that began in 1997, was carried out on 23,747 people aged over 15.

"We are increasingly seeing major forms of obesity, the ones that are most dangerous to health, especially among the young. The health system should prepare to take on more and more grave obseity cases, including those aged over 65," Basdevant said.

He added that obesity multiplied by 10 the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and other vascular problems.