Beleaguered French foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced her resignation today after weeks of criticism over her contacts with the former Tunisian regime, stressing she had committed no wrongdoing.

"While I do not feel that I have committed any wrongdoing, I have... decided to leave my job as foreign minister," Alliot-Marie wrote in her resignation letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy, a copy of which was seen by AFP.

"I ask you to accept my resignation," she wrote in the letter which begins with a handwritten "Dear Nicolas."

"Since several weeks, I have been the target of political attacks and then in the media, using, to create suspicion, counter-truths and generalisations," wrote Alliot-Marie, who was named France's first woman foreign minister in December.

"For the last two weeks, it is my family's private life that has been suffering real harassment at the hands of certain media (and) I cannot accept that some people use this cabal to try to make people believe in a weakening of France's international policy."

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