France’s president-elect Francois Hollande set about the task of building his government and ties with allies on Monday as he closed on Nicolas Sarkozy after elections tight race
France's president-elect Francois Hollande set about the task of building his government and ties with allies on Monday as he closed on Nicolas Sarkozy after elections tight race. 
The 57-year-old Socialist won power Sunday against France's outgoing right-wing leader Nicolas Sarkozy, triggering joyful street parties.
A date for the formal handover of power has not yet been set -- it should come before May 15 -- but Hollande has begun consultations with European allies, including telephone talks with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Hollande, while no radical, has vowed to slow the pace of Sarkozy's public spending cuts and renegotiate the EU fiscal pact, under which the 17 members of the single currency bloc agreed tough measures to slash their deficits.
In his victory speech on Sunday, Hollande admitted that the eyes of Europe and the world were on France, but promised to carry through on his promise to revise the hard-won EU stability pact to focus more on growth than cuts.
"You are much more than a people who want change. You are already a movement that is rising across all of Europe and maybe the world," he told the cheering masses celebrating his victory in Paris' iconic Bastille Square. "This is the mission that is now mine: to give the European project a dimension of growth, employment, prosperity -- in short, a future," he had said earlier, at another speech in his electoral stronghold of Tulle.
"This is what I will say as soon as possible to our European partners and first of all to Germany," he said. "We are not just any country on the planet, just any nation in the world, we are France."
Congratulations
Merkel invited Hollande to Berlin for talks, and her Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters in Berlin: "We will work together on a growth pact. I am confident the Franco-German friendship will be further deepened."
US President Barack Obama invited Hollande for talks at the White House before the G8 summit. The United States is in particular concerned about his pledge to pull France's 3,300-strong contingent out of the NATO-led occupation force in Afghanistan by the end of this year -- a year earlier than previously planned.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday congratulated Hollande on winning the French presidential vote, and expressed hope that the good ties between France and the occupying entity would continue. "I look forward to a meeting with him to continue this important relationship -- important bilaterally and internationally."
Spain's PM sees 'obligation' to get along with Hollande.
China said it was ready to work with Hollande as president. "China is ready to work together with the French side... To deal with bilateral relations from a strategic and long term perspective," said foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei at a briefing. "China believes that maintaining a positive momentum of the healthy and steady development of China-France relations not only serves the fundamental interests of the two countries and two peoples, but also world peace, stability and development."
Sarkozy congratulated Hollande on the win and signalled that he intends to step back from frontline politics.
