Major media are reporting that the French minister of the interior and a leading candidate to replace President Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, met with American Jewish community leaders yesterday in New York.

The meeting, which took place at the French Consulate on Fifth Avenue, was covered widely by the French press. Mr. Sarkozy later attended memorial events commemorating the fifth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11.

The meeting marked the first time a major French presidential candidate has publicly cultivated relations with the American Jewish community before an election, and it came as French parties are preparing to select their candidates for the presidential election in April.

For the past three years, since the outbursts of anti-Semitism in France caught the attention of Americans, Mr. Chirac and his foreign ministers have touched base regularly with Jewish groups in New York, Washington, and Paris.

But the French political class has long portrayed the Jewish lobby as a malignant influence on American policy.

“I am a friend of America. I am a friend of Israel,” Mr. Sarkozy, the head of the conservative party Union for a Popular Movement, said.