By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he shouldn't have lost his cool and used an expletive to berate a man who insulted him - an exchange caught on camera that became an Internet sensation.
"It would have been better if I didn't respond to him," Le Parisien newspaper's Tuesday edition quoted Sarkozy as saying in a panel interview with its readers.
Sarkozy was shaking hands at an agriculture fair Saturday when a man in the crowd asked Sarkozy not to touch him because it would get him "dirty."
Video of the episode showed Sarkozy telling the man to get lost and using an expletive. "Casse-toi alors, pauvre con, va," he said, a phrase whose mildest possible translation is: "Get out of here, you poor jerk."