Royal seeks to rebuild French Socialists' support

PARIS, Aug 25 (Reuters) Defeated French presidential candidate Segolene Royal broke two months of silence today to stake her claim to lead the Socialists.

Royal told supporters in western France she had returned from her holiday a ''new'' woman.

''We will be able to succeed in renewing the Socialist party and a certain number of its ideas if we succeed also in renewing the way we behave on a day to day basis,'' she told supporters, urging an end to party infighting.

Socialist leaders will meet next weekend to try to pick up the pieces from the party's third consecutive presidential election defeat.

Royal, a regional leader, has made clear she hopes to represent the party in the next presidential election in 2012.

But she is controversial within her party because she often distanced herself from its policies and openly courted centrist voters during her failed campaign to defeat Sarkozy.

Some Socialists interpreted her decision to reveal soon after June's legislative election that she had split from Francois Hollande, current party leader and father of her four children, as an attempt to deflect attention from the results.

''Hollande-Royal: beginning of the end, or end of the party?'' left leaning daily Liberation asked today, alluding to how the separation has left the party divided at the highest level.

Meanwhile, an opinion poll today for newspaper Journal du Dimanche found support for Sarkozy at 69 per cent, the highest level since his election in May.

Royal admitted to supporters she had ''improvised'' on the campaign trail but showed little regret, arguing the party needed ''ideological change'' to make individual freedom and choice a goal alongside its past focus on the collective good.

An LH2 poll last week found almost a third of French voters think former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn -- now a candidate to head the International Monetary Fund -- would be the best Socialist figurehead.

Fifteen percent opted for Royal, 7 per cent supported Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe and 4 per cent voted for former prime minister Laurent Fabius.

Hollande is set to leave his post as party leader in 2008.

Former Socialist prime minister Michel Rocard gave a blunt assessment of the party's health in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper, saying it was not fit to govern.

''The Socialist party ... is not in a very special situation; it's been the same for a century! This party was created in 1905 on an ambiguity it has never resolved: it doesn't know whether it should accept market economics or destroy everything,'' he said. ''We are the last socialist party in Europe that has not made this choice.'' Reuters GT GC2256