FRANCE: National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen says that conservative presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy is an opportunist

While visiting a former mining town in northern France, National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen dismissed conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy as an opportunist and said he considered himself better than him. French far-right veteran Jean-Marie Le Pen brushed aside election frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy's bid to woo supporters of his National Front party, dismissing his rival as an opportunist. Sarkozy, a hardline former interior minister, has tried to win over National Front voters, focusing heavily on Le Pen's traditional territory of immigration and security. But Le Pen, 78, declares he is unimpressed. "I think, above all, that he's a boy, a convinced Sarkozyist and he is an opportunist and that we are absolutely not protected by solid principles that could put him into a frame, that's it", Le Pen told Reuters during one of his rare visits outside Paris. "I consider myself better than him, that's it. I'm not going to analyse or dissect his personality. I think that one of his main asset is his personal ambition and for me, it's not the main quality of a head of state, in particular when he is a fervent European," he said. Le Pen, who wants to stop immigration, protect French industrial champions and take France out of NATO, shocked the country in the 2002 election by finishing second after knocking out Socialist Lionel Jospin. This is his fifth campaign. Critics call him racist and say that his election would be a disaster for France. Opinion polls say his support has risen slightly in recent weeks but he is lying in fourth place, far behind the frontrunners Sarkozy and Socialist Segolene Royal. But he says he is convinced he will make it to the second round run-off on May 6 and he refuses to rule out a sixth bid. Sarkozy and Le Pen have been battling for the support of working class voters, many of whom have become disenchanted with traditional left-wing parties. Henin-Beaumont is a former mining town that Le Pen's National Front party considers to be symbolic of its success in drawing the working class away from the mainstream parties. The town gave him 23.5 percent in the first round in 2002 and 26 percent in the runoff against President Jacques Chirac, much higher than his national score of 16.8 and 17.9 percent. Unemployment is higher than the national average and many of those with jobs work in factories that are under threat from foreign competition. Le Pen sought to underline his working class credentials by saying he was the only candidate who had done manual work, as a fisherman and then as a miner. He has questioned Sarkozy's qualifications to lead France, saying his background as the son of a Hungarian immigrant was not appropriate for a president. And the former paratrooper said that unlike Sarkozy, he had fought for France. "Yes, no doubt, there are a certain number of places where Mr Sarkozy has never set foot. In particular, those where we risk our lives." he said, in a disused nightclub serving as his local party headquarters. But Le Pen also criticised the other candidates and said it was hard to pick out differences between them all. "I don't have any particular wish because I consider them all interchangeable. They are people from the establishment who don't really have different policies, in any case on the main topics, in particular towards Europe, there's not much difference between the socialists, UMP (conservative party) and UDF (centrist party), the political parties that have conducted France for the past thirty years", he said. While some local residents booed him when he left the local National Front headquarters, some others applauded.

ITN Source | April 18, 2007

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