Le Pen sets his sights on June poll gains

The National Front's political bureau met in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud yesterday to choose its candidates for next month's general election, which a leading official said would be a "nightmare" for the re-elected president Jacques Chirac and the moderate right.

Jean-Marie Le Pen attracted a record 5.5 million supporters in Sunday's presidential election, making the National Front Europe's most successful far-right movement. Now its electoral planners are warning Gaullists and centrists that they will have to draw up a pact with them or risk losing scores of seats to the left.

Technically, if its supporters stay loyal the National Front has the biggest potential vote of any party on June 9 and 16.

What was considered a fragile first-round protest vote turned into solid backing for Mr Le Pen in Sunday's second round.

In 1997, with roughly the same level of backing as today's NF, the Socialists won 258 national assembly seats, overturning a rightwing majority. But the two-round system and constituency boundaries work against marginal movements, which means that the NF could end up with only a few seats.

Mr Le Pen, 73, will not stand in June, but will remain NF president and continue to campaign on an anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic, law and order platform.

The dominant figure will be his deputy, Bruno Gollnisch, 52, an urbane, English-speaking university lecturer and lawyer who persuaded his leader to moderate his racist remarks and adopt a more media-friendly attitude.

Mr Le Pen's advisers believe that far-right candidates will win at least 12.5% in the first round in 319 of the 577 national assembly constituencies. This percentage allows candidates to fight the second round, even if they have no chance of winning.

Traditionally, the worst-placed contenders drop out and back a politically sympathetic rival. But the National Front has already ruled that out.

Its electoral strategist Eric Ioro said that about 70% of the 319 seats are "winnable". But because of the way the electoral system favoured mainstream parties, the immediate hope was to return at least 20 MPs: 15 less than in 1986, when there was proportional representation.

The movement has no members in the present assembly: its only winner in 1997 was disqualified for cheating.

"We mean to be the right's worst nightmare next month," Mr Ioro said.

"In 1997, 69 of our candidates went into the second round and because of the right's rejection of an electoral pact, most of these seats went to the left. This time round, [Chirac's] right will have to quickly choose between joining a [anti-NF] republican front or us."

Carl Lang, the NF secretary general, ruled out a u-turn by the NF electorate which, he said, "now represents the French people's resistance vote, after an attempt at brainwashing over the past fortnight in which France resembled one of Pol Pot's camps".

Predicting the outcome has been further complicated by the uneven spread of NF support. Its chances of picking up a significant number of seats are confined to Alsace, the Mediterranean region and the north.

Louis Alliot, Mr Le Pen's campaign manager, said his party would try to overcome the reluctance in other areas of France by nominating independents and popular local figures who had rallied to the movement during the two rounds of voting.

"The public are going to get tired very quickly of rightwing appeals to vote for the left to block the National Front's rise," he added. "You'll see, we'll very soon become the principal choice on the right."

Members of the outgoing Socialist-led coalition, which includes Communists and Greens, are also discussing election tactics to avoid leftwing clashes in most seats.