He took down two at once when he said José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain “may not be very clever, but I know people who were very clever and who did not make the second round of the presidential election”  a slam at Lionel Jospin, the former French Socialist leader.

Image British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, left, U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, right, at a commemoration for dead NATO soldiers on April 4 in Kehl, Germany. Credit... Pool photo, via Getty Images

Mr. Sarkozy’s model seemed to be Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. “The important thing in democracy is to be re-elected,” Mr. Sarkozy reportedly said. “Look at Berlusconi. He has been re-elected three times.” (He has actually been re-elected twice.)

While Mr. Sarkozy’s office denied Thursday that he had made such comments about Mr. Zapatero and said he had praised him instead, there were no similar denials about the other comments.

Mr. Obama, according to Mr. Sarkozy, “has a subtle mind, very intelligent and very charismatic. But he was elected two months ago and never ran a ministry in his life. He doesn’t have a position on a number of things.” Mr. Obama “is not always operating at a level of decision-making and efficiency,” according to the voluble Mr. Sarkozy.

Mr. Obama appeared unprepared on climate change when they met, according to Mr. Sarkozy, who told the legislators, “I told him, ‘I don’t think that you have quite understood what we are doing on carbon dioxide.’ ”