France's Chirac refuses to yield to Sarkozy

PARIS, Jan 9 (Reuters) French President Jacques Chirac and a loyal old guard seem determined to hamper hardliner Nicolas Sarkozy's bid to succeed him at the Elysee Palace, recalling some of the great personal rivalries of France's Fifth Republic.

Though Sarkozy is Chirac's interior minister and successor as leader of the main centre right party, as the presidential vote nears almost anything Chirac says is scanned for subtle or unsubtle attacks on the ambitious son of Hungarian immigrants.

Sarkozy is expected to be anointed as the ruling UMP party's official presidential candidate on Sunday, setting him on course to take on Socialist Segolene Royal in the election in April.

But long-standing rivals in his own camp have been sniping at him constantly since the start of the year, making it clear he will not have a united right behind him at his nomination.

Chirac's antipathy towards him has been a constant since Sarkozy deserted him for a conservative rival in the 1995 election and after holding power for more than a decade, the president refuses to rule out a last-minute bid himself.

Supporters of Chirac like Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and the president of the National Assembly, Jean-Louis Debre, have also pointedly refused to endorse Sarkozy.

''I don't much like the word 'anointment','' Debre told an interviewer today. ''It sounds like a monarchy and I'm a Republican,'' he said in answer to a question on Sarkozy's expected unopposed endorsement.

But whether their resistance will have any effect on the outcome is unclear and the French press has mainly treated it as a 74 year-old president's reluctance to go quietly.

With a recent poll showing 81 percent of voters opposed to a further term for Chirac, he would suffer ''the biggest flop imaginable'' if he stood again, the regional daily La Presse de la Manche said in an editorial.

''Like Francois Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac is convinced that his successor won't be able to match him. It's human.'' PERSONAL INSULTS For the veteran Chirac, Sarkozy's attacks on French ''immobility'', his criticism, on a visit to the United States, of France's ''arrogant'' foreign policy and his promise of a ''quiet break'' with the past, are tantamount to personal insults.

Sarkozy, who began as a youthful campaign worker for Chirac in 1981, is the latest in a long line of rivals for the president over more than four decades in politics.

Like Mitterrand, his Machiavellian predecessor, Chirac has made an art of dealing with his foes, seeing off both former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Edouard Balladur, the former prime minister he beat in 1995.

But Sarkozy has also prospered in the brutal world of the French right, revelling in his status as an outsider who did not go to any of the prestigious schools that traditionally educate France's political elite.

He has used the hostility of Chirac and his supporters to back his claims to represent a break with the past, a key asset in the coming battle with Royal, who has also sped past a string of long-standing rivals to represent the left-wing camp.

Reuters BDP GC2110