Sarkozy Wishes Ailing Chirac Well But Steps Up Poll Challenge

Jacques Chirac was in a "very satisfactory" condition, his doctors said yesterday after the French president spent his second night in a Paris military hospital with blood vessel problems that had slightly impaired his sight.

The news of Mr Chirac's hospitalisation, announced on Saturday, did not prevent his main election rival, the interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, from declaring at a rally of their centre-right UMP party that "nothing could stop" his own drive for the presidency in 2007.

"The president had a good night. His general condition and his tests are very satisfactory," the Val de Grace military hospital said. Mr Chirac, 72, was admitted on Friday after what his aides described as a "vascular accident" affecting his vision. He is expected to be in hospital for several days.

Doctors said such a problem could range from a ruptured blood vessel to a stroke, which is often connected to vision trouble. More than 80% of strokes are caused by blockage in an artery carrying blood to the brain.

The incident will almost certainly prove a serious setback to the president's hopes of re-election, which look shaky after a string of humiliating defeats, including France's rejection of the Chirac-backed EU constitution and the loss of the 2012 Olympic Games.

Mr Sarkozy has made no secret of his intention to challenge Mr Chirac for the Elysée palace in two years' time. He told the UMP rally in the Atlantic resort of La Baule that it was possible to disagree on some issues while wishing the president a speedy recovery "with all our hearts". But he said "nobody will stop me from completing the mission that you have set for me".

With Mr Chirac's personal approval rating languishing at record lows and his health difficulties likely to accelerate, the race is on among the right wing to find his successor.

The opinion polls have long put Mr Sarkozy as the frontrunner. But the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, the president's protege, has been rising fast in the polls and is making a determined bid to portray himself as a far more moderate, if no less efficient, potential head of state.

Mr De Villepin, who visited the president on Saturday, has focused his recent speeches on the need to "modernise" France's costly and over-generous social model. Mr Sarkozy said yesterday that France needed "a whole new model".

The president's wife, Bernadette, visited him at the hospital yesterday, but made no comment afterwards. Mr Chirac has cancelled a summit tomorrow with the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and a lunch on Friday with Prince Albert II of Monaco.