French right to back Sarkozy presidential bid

PARIS, Jan 14 (Reuters) France's ruling centre-right crowns Nicolas Sarkozy as its presidential candidate today, but to win in May the interior minister must use his acceptance speech to start wooing voters put off by his strident image.

As the only candidate, Sarkozy is certain to win an internal vote of his Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), whose lavish congress will seek to gloss over weeks of in-fighting that has dismayed UMP voters and hurt his hopes of election in May.

Weeks of veiled and open attacks by President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin have fuelled suspicions they would be happy to see their rival lose.

Polls suggest Sarkozy will reach a May 6 run-off ballot but a string of recent surveys suggest the Socialist Segolene Royal could beat him and become France's first woman head of state.

Ahead of the congress Sarkozy won a major boost, however, when Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie pledged to drop her plans to run and campaign alongside her erstwhile rival.

That could help him attract traditional conservatives as well as centrists cool on his economic reforms, pro-US stance and harsh rhetoric on law-and-order and immigration.

An Ifop poll for Sunday's Journal du Dimanche (JDD) weekly showed that while large majorities thought he had the innovative policies and stature to be president, 51 percent said Sarkozy worried them.

Politicians on the left and right in part blamed his vow to rid crime-ridden housing projects of ''scum'' for 2005 suburban riots, the worst in 40 years, an outburst that has damaged his ability to reach out to voters beyond his natural electorate.

''Many people in the housing estates can't stand Sarkozy and are ready to vote for me massively,'' Jean-Marie Le Pen, the veteran far-right leader who caused a sensation in the 2002 election by making it to the run-off ballot, scoffed in Sunday's edition of Le Parisien newspaper.

Frederic Dabi of French pollster Ifop said Sarkozy looked set to do well in the April 22 first round, attracting support from the centre-right UDF and far-right National Front.

But come the May 6 run-off ballot likely to oppose him and Royal, floating voters may be turned off by his links to big business and his tough law-and-order image, he said.

Sarkozy had to ''continue to occupy the political space on the right with a view to the first round, while preventing Royal from benefiting from an anti-Sarkozy vote by parts of the UDF and National Front electorate,'' he said.

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