France's Le Pen sets out election campaign

LILLE, France, Feb 25 (Reuters) French nationalist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen mixed traditional anti-immigration rhetoric with pledges to families, farmers and the poor in a broad speech setting out his fifth presidential election campaign today.

Le Pen, who stunned France by coming second to Jacques Chirac in the previous election five years ago, told a rally he would impose strict immigration controls and pay for social projects by cutting off welfare to foreigners.

He also sought to tap public concerns about the environment and global warming and proposed a Marshall Plan for the countryside echoing reconstruction plans after World War Two.

''I will be the president of the men and women of the countryside because upon them rests the honour of being French,'' the National Front party leader told flag-waving supporters.

He reiterated criticism of the European Union and globalisation and he denounced global financial speculators as ''sharks'' in bed with Russian and French oligarchs.

''I will be the president who restablishes the right to govern without our sovereignty being confiscated,'' he said.

In remarks designed to capitalise on growing popular distrust of the political elite, Le Pen addressed his policies to the ''low ranks, farmers, pensioners, widows, street kids''.

''To those of you who work for peanuts, I say let us take back power and relive the pleasure of being French.'' TRAILING SUPPORT Le Pen is doing better in the race for the April-May presidential election than he was before the 2002 poll.

But he is far behind the leading candidates, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Segolene Royal.

He also trails centrist Francois Bayrou, the alternative candidate who has seen the biggest surge in his ratings.

A poll for Sunday newspaper Journal du Dimanche suggested 11.5 per cent of voters planned to vote for Le Pen in the first stage of the two-round election, lagging Bayrou on 17 per cent and Royal and Sarkozy who are both on 28 per cent.

Le Pen's daughter Marine, who has given the 78-year-old National Front leader a softer image to try to appeal to new voters, predicted a repeat of his 2002 breakthrough.

By organising his rally in the northern town of Lille, where he won most votes in 2002, Le Pen hopes to remind media and his rivals in main parties how wrong they were last time.

''I hope Jean-Marie Le Pen will do better than in 2002,'' Marine Le Pen told reporters, mocking the widespread description of his 2002 election upset as a political earthquake.

''I can already see the headlines -- after an earthquake, then what do you have? The end of the world?,'' she said.

Sarkozy has moved into Le Pen's traditional law-and-order territory and voters' worries have shifted to jobs and purchasing power, neither of them strong points for Le Pen.

Le Pen reeled off a list of things that were wrong with France from the economy to the role of families and promised a ''parental wage'' for people bringing up the next generation.

Reuters SAM DB2250