FRANCE:Jean-Marie Le Pen has softened some of his rougher edges, writes Lara Marlowein Paris
Jean-Marie Le Pen thinks he knows how he is going to become president of France. The MEP and leader of the extreme right-wing National Front came a distant second in the 2002 election. But he made it to the run-off, and it would take a not totally impossible scenario to land him there again.
"In the event of a serious international crisis, we're headed straight for power," Le Pen said in an interview with The Irish Times. "What if the US or Israel attack Iran? Iran will block the Straits of Hormuz and petrol will go to $200 or $300 per barrel. Our economies will collapse. Chirac will say, 'I didn't intend to stand, but' . . ." In the political fantasy that Le Pen spins, enough supporters of right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy would follow their loyalty to Chirac to split the right-wing vote. "They'll knock each other out," he predicts. He would then challenge the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, in the May 6th run-off. "It just needs a little crisis," he says. "You'll see, this year will take your breath away!"
Le Pen doesn't think much of Royal. "Listening to her talk, I think her computer's not all there," he says. "Her name makes them quiver in the [once aristocratic neighbourhood of the] quartier Saint-Germain. I call her altesse [ highness]." Age (he is 78) and the influence of his campaign strategist and daughter Marine seem to have softened Le Pen's edges. He no longer makes jokes about gas chambers or threatens to repatriate immigrants en masse. In our interview, he would no longer commit to former hobby horses: banning abortion and taking France out of the euro zone.
Le Pen's wish to discourage abortion is tied up with his horror of immigration. Through abortion, "we lose 200,000 births every year," he says. "When we need them." The word "white" - what Le Pen calls français de souche (with French roots) is understood before the figure 200,000.
At a "patriotic banquet" in a Paris suburb last Sunday, Le Pen said the French population was being "submerged" by immigrants. He didn't take kindly to my suggestion that it sounded racist. "Ô là là! I sounded racist? Mon dieu!" he exclaimed sarcastically. "I am terrified by this accusation!"
Le Pen continued: "Ten million foreigners have come to our country in the last 30 years. Between 300,000 and 500,000 continue to arrive every year." The problem, he insists, is that French welfare policies favour new immigrants. "How would you like it if we sent our excess immigrants to Ireland?" he asks, adding: "That'll drive the price of whiskey down!"
Le Pen met Saddam Hussein several times. The Iraqi dictator turned 60 French hostages over to him before the 1991 Gulf war, and Le Pen's wife Jany set up a charity for Iraqi children hurt by economic sanctions. Though he would support the death penalty in France, Le Pen denounces the "shameful" way Saddam was hanged. "He was a head of state. He wasn't a horse thief in Connecticut . . . And the civilians killed by American planes; aren't these war crimes?" Saddam will go down in history "as a man who maintained the unity of his country, and a certain peace, with the fist," Le Pen says. He prefers the 30 years of Saddam's hard rule to "the chaos, civil war, death and misery that unfortunately those who overthrew him have created."
Sarkozy and Royal, the leading candidates, both dropped by the annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) on Tuesday night. Sarkozy told a Jewish group in New York that preventing Iran from getting the bomb is his "top priority", and Royal will participate in a debate on Iran sponsored by the CRIF.
"What right do we have to deprive Iran of rights that every other country in the world has?" Le Pen asks. The UN Security Council has ordered Tehran to stop enriching uranium, I remind him. "They should obey UN resolutions when other countries in the region start doing so," he says, alluding to Israel.
The second World War, the Holocaust and denial are topics so sensitive that Le Pen will not discuss them, for fear of incurring more heavy fines under French law. He will go on trial in June for having said the Nazi occupation of France "was not particularly inhumane". His deputy, Bruno Gollnisch, is appealing a recent conviction for "contesting the existence of a crime against humanity". Gollnisch called for a "free discussion" of the topic.
Le Pen denounces the "shameful exploitation" of the death of Abbé Pierre, a priest who fought for the rights of the homeless, by French politicians. Pierre once compared Le Pen to Mussolini. "Sometimes men of God are unjust," Le Pen sighs.