PARIS (AFP-EJP)--- French Holocaust survivor and former
minister Simone Veil has disowned a call by right-wing presidential frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy to create a ministry for immigration and national identity.

"I didn’t like the ambiguity of the formula at all. I would have preferred to speak of a ministry for immigration and integration," the 79-year-old, who rallied Sarkozy’s campaign last week, said in an interview in the Marianne weekly.

The interior minister has faced a barrage of protest over the comments, criticised as a ploy to appeal to the extreme-right electorate of Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Sarkozy’s ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) made much of the announcement last week that Veil, a highly-respected former centrist minister and European parliament president, had chosen to back the right-winger rather than his centrist rival Francois Bayrou in the presidential race.

Continued support

In the interview Veil said she continued to support him: "Nicolas Sarkozy, for me, is still best qualified to become president of the republic, even if I don’t always agree with some of his ideas or attitudes."

Asked to comment on Veil’s remarks, Sarkozy said that "everyone has the right to their own opinion", pointing to a poll that said two-thirds of the public approved of his comments on national identity.

Immigration has become a sensitive issue in the campaign for the election following rioting in 2005 in predominantly immigrant suburbs across the country that highlighted France’s strained integration policies.

Appeal to youth

On Sunday, the 52-year-old Sarkozy reached out to France’s youth with an appeal for brotherhood among races and religions, but refused to back off his proposal for a ministry of immigration and national identity.

"I’m not afraid to defend the identity of France, of the republic, of the nation," Sarkozy said at a rally of some 8,000 youths, mainly from his own UMP party.

"If we don’t talk about France how can we be surprised that what separates us ends up being bigger than what unites us?"

Le Pen’s stunning performance in the 2002 elections, when he reached the runoff to face incumbent President Jacques Chirac, has made the subject of immigration particularly touchy in this year’s race. Le Pen was overwhelmingly defeated in the runoff in 2002 in a rare show of left-right unity.

On Sunday, Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant, evoked Martin Luther King’s "I have a dream" speech in appealing for French "fraternity."

"I dream that you live in a France where no one is judged by the color of his skin, his religion or the address of his neighborhood, but on the nature of his character," Sarkozy said, adding that he dreams that "Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim children can sit together at the table of French fraternity."

Sarkozy, who is said to be the favourite candidate of the French Jewish community, is credited with 29 percent in the first round vote on April 22, ahead of Socialist Ségolène Royal with 23 percent and Bayrou with 21 percent, according to a poll released last Friday.

The second round between the two leading contenders is on May 6.