Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen is the sexiest man in Finland, French President Jacques Chirac said in off-the-cuff remarks recorded by television crews at a Europe-Asia summit in Helsinki.

"Let me introduce you to the sexiest man in Finland," Chirac joked to Spain's prime minister when he spotted¹ the 51-year-old Vanhanen entering a meeting room. "You can believe it because it's in all the papers, it's in the press."

Spain's Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero smiled at the remark.

Last year, Chirac caused much offence in Finland and in Britain when he was quoted by a French paper as saying that "after Finland, that is the country (Britain) where you eat the worst".

Last week, the French magazine L'Express reported that Chirac had described the Finnish EU presidency's handling of the Lebanon crisis in July and August as "useless and incompetent²".

The president's office denied this. Last year it also denied that Chirac had made the disparaging³ remark about Finnish and British cuisine⁴.