PARIS (AFP-EJP)--- French extreme-right presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen has said he regrets that outgoing French President Jacques Chirac recognized the responsibility of the French state in the deportation of Jews.
"I regret it. He has been the sole president of France to do so. Even
François Mitterrand didn’t," Le Pen said in an interview published on
Sunday.
Le Pen was answering questions from a reader who asked him if he
regrets the manner the Holocaust is being taught in schools.
Le Pen answered: "It is a subject which I shall not approach. When I
expressed myself in terms however moderate, this cost me 150 million
Francs."
Chirac was the first French president to acknowledge the
responsibility of the state in the deportation of Jews in France
during WWII when he made his comments in 1995.
"I am not afraid"
Le Pen also came back on the word "detail" he once used and for which he was condemned.
" Oh! I am not afraid to use this word which means party of the whole. And I take all my responsibilities,"the National Front leader said.
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Chirac was in 1995 the first French president to acknowledge the responsibility of the state in the deportation of Jews in France. |
In September 1987 Le Pen had declared that the Nazi gas chambers were "a minor detail of the history of the Second World War". He was condemned to pay then 1,2 million francs (183.200 euros) for having
trivialized persecutions by the Nazis.
"It is the only thing that they found to reproach me in fifty years of
public life, while so many of my rivals dipped hands into the case and
should be in correctional, not to say more."
Plot accusations
Also on Sunday, Socialist presidential candidate Segoline Royal
accused presidential frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy of plotting to make a secret pact with Le Pen.
Royal said the former Interior Minister was negotiating a deal with Le
Pen’s National Front, after a key aide to Sarkozy announced a plan to
add an element of proportional representation into the separate June
parliamentary elections, something Le Pen has been demanding for
years.
Sarkozy has been accused of seeking the votes of Le Pen’s supporters in the second round of the presidential poll in May. His most likely
second round opponent is either Royal or Francois Bayrou, the centrist leader.
Le Pen stunned France in the 2002 presidential race, when he reached the runoff to face then President Chirac. Le Pen was overwhelmingly
defeated in a rare show of left-right unity.
The latest polls put Sarkozy still firmly in the lead with 30 per
cent, Royal second with 24 per cent, Bayrou third with 18.5 per cent
and Le Pen in fourth place with 13.5 per cent. However, 42 per cent of the electorate remain undecided.