Chirac snubs Le Pen TV challenge

RENNES, France -- French President Jacques Chirac has ruled out any form of television debate with his far-right election rival Jean-Marie Le Pen.

"Faced with intolerance and hatred," Chirac told a campaign rally in the western city of Rennes on Tuesday, "no debate is possible."

National Front leader Le Pen, 73, the shock qualifier for a May 5 runoff in France's presidential election, had challenged Chirac to a head-on TV debate.

Le Pen, who has been accused by his rivals as being a racist and anti-Semitic -- he campaigned on an anti-immigrant ticket and once called the Holocaust a detail of history -- said he will face Chirac "any time, any place."

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But Michele Alliot-Marie of Chirac's conservative Rally for the Republic (RPR) party, told Reuters: "I have seen Le Pen in debates, I have seen the way he employs slander and insult more than ideas."

She said any debate would have had to ensured "dignity and (a) democratic nature."

Le Pen's campaign director Bruno Gollnisch told RMC radio: "What we want is a confrontation, a peaceable one but not just a juxtaposition of monologues, a so-called American-style debate.

"It's got to be possible for one to criticise the proposals of the other."

Chirac told the Rennes rally: "You must have the courage of your convictions and the steadfastness of your commitments.

"Just as I did not accept any alliance in the past with the National Front, whatever the political price, I will not accept a debate with its leader in the future."

Poll results showed that Le Pen knocked political rival Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin out of Sunday's presidential election by less than 200,000 votes.

Figures released on Tuesday by the Interior Ministry showed that Le Pen won a total of 4,805,307 votes compared to 4,610,749 for Jospin -- a difference of 194,658 votes.

Some of those who voted for Le Pen said only he among the 16 candidates really understood how crime and excessive European influence was ruining the lives of ordinary French people.

But for many, the immigration clampdown advocated by the National Front leader was not the priority.

"What I wanted to do was send the whole of the political class packing," Christophe Rocca, a 35-year-old pharmacist who works in Paris, told Reuters.

"What Jean-Marie Le Pen says gels with reality on crime, on immigration, the economy, Europe. In 1995 I voted for (President Jacques) Chirac but nothing that he promised came true."

Franck Moreau, 31, said: "In 1988 I voted for (Socialist Francois) Mitterrand and in 1995 for Jospin but they did nothing to fight globalisation.

"I want to keep the franc and I don't want Europe to end up in the hands of the Americans. Perhaps Le Pen is no good, but we've never tried him."

Pollsters say Chirac will win easily beat Le Pen on May 5, but the conservatives will need to fight hard to win a parliamentary majority to avoid their conservative head of state sharing power with a National Assembly controlled by the left for another five years.

Le Pen's sudden surge means National Front candidates could hold the balance of power in between 150 and 200 of France's 577 constituencies.

Although few or none are expected to win, they could split the right-wing vote and help a leftist candidate to victory.

Chirac has called on the country to defend the democratic values of "tolerance and respect."

"I would like to remind all French men and French women to gather together to defend human rights, to guarantee the cohesion of the nation and to affirm the unity of the republic," Chirac said.

With much of France still in shock over the result, more mass protests have been held across the country for a second day.

By midday on Tuesday, at least 20,000 people had taken to the streets in towns throughout France.

Up to 6,000 school students marched in Lyon, France's second-largest city; 4,000 people held a protest in western Brest; 3,000 protested in Rennes, capital of Brittany; 2,000 showed up in southwestern Angouleme, and at least 1,000 protested in Orleans, Toulon, Rouen and three other cities.

In Paris, a top union of high school students called on members to attend an afternoon rally at the Place de la Republique in the capital. It was just one of the groups expected to participate.

Jospin, humiliated after a dull campaign that failed to capitalise on his government's economic record, has he announced he will quit politics and step down as prime minister on May 6.