Bruni cocaine lyric raises smoke

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy's knack for metaphors and publicity has made her new album notorious in South America even before anybody has heard it.

The French president's model-turned-singer wife has angered Colombia's government with lyrics which reportedly appear on an album due to be released on July 21. The French daily Le Figaro reported that a song included the lines: “You are my drug/ More deadly than Afghan heroin/ More dangerous than white Colombian.”

Whether this was a reference to her husband Nicolas Sarkozy or a former lover was unclear - but it was enough to rile Colombia's foreign minister, Fernando Araujo, who felt cocaine was an inappropriate metaphor for ardour given the mayhem the narcotic breeds.

“Coming from the mouth of the wife of the president of France, this type of statement is very painful for Colombia,” said the foreign minister. His own marriage ended when he was kidnapped for six years by cocaine-trafficking guerrillas, an ordeal which ended with a dramatic escape in the jungle.

Colombia recently launched an awareness campaign in Europe to deglamorise the drug, which it said kills thousands of Colombians and produces 80% of the world's cocaine through narco-related violence, and damages the rainforest.