Private jet backlash

The office of the French development minister was today forced to justify spending $157,000 for a private jet to fly the minister to a conference on Haiti.



Alain Joyandet flew from Paris to Martinique a week ago, to attend a meeting preparing for a donors’ conference on Wednesday in New York to raise billions of dollars to help rebuild Haiti.



The minister’s aides said he used the private jet because he wanted to make sure he would be back in Paris on Wednesday morning for the first meeting of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s reshuffled cabinet.