KEY POINTS:
PARIS - Confirming the worst-kept secret in France, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has announced he will seek the presidential nomination of his ruling UMP party, a contest he is expected to win comfortably.
In an interview with regional newspapers leaked on the website of the Paris daily Liberation yesterday, Sarkozy said he would resign his ministerial post before the April vote if the UMP picked him as its candidate at a congress on January 14.
"My response is yes," Sarkozy said when asked if he was running for President.
He did not set a date for his departure from the Government, saying only: "I will no longer be minister come the election."
In an interview to be published in a number of regional newspapers today, he said: "I feel I have the strength, the energy and the desire to propose a different view of France."
The decision to grant an interview to the Paris correspondents of four regional newspapers has strong echoes of Sarkozy's former mentor turned bitter enemy, President Jacques Chirac.
Chirac, who has long courted voters in deepest provincial France, announced his 1994 campaign in an interview in Calais with the local paper, La Voix du Nord.
Sarkozy's bid to become the first immigrant's son to lead modern France faces a stern test from Socialist Segolene Royal, seeking to become the first woman to run the euro zone's second-biggest economy.
Polls show them neck-and-neck, but a recent surge by veteran far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen means neither is assured of a place in the May 6 run-off ballot.
Le Pen stunned France in the 2002 presidential election by beating Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin into third place and out of the race.
Commentators say it would take a similar kind of political earthquake to prevent the UMP's 300,000 members picking Sarkozy.
The centre right's primary is small scale compared with the six weeks of rallies and televised debates the opposition Socialists organised before picking Royal last month.
The contest is a sop to internal critics and a response to polls showing UMP members wanted a Socialist-style primary, something Sarkozy rejected given the mainstream right's record of debate, internal warfare and electoral debacle.
Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has criticised Sarkozy's sometimes strident style and policies such as affirmative action for minorities. She has until the end of the year to announce whether she will run against him.
An Ipsos poll of UMP supporters in Le Point news weekly showed 78 per cent support for Sarkozy, with 13 per cent for Alliot-Marie and 9 per cent for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
Villepin leaves for Africa today, a decision commentators said was a deliberate snub to Sarkozy designed to show the Prime Minister was above the presidential fray.
ROAD TO POWER
Noble blood
Born in 1955 to a Hungarian nobleman and mother of Greek Jewish origin, Nicolas Sarkozy is the youngest of three brothers.
Route less travelled
He studied law, trained as a lawyer, and worked his way up the ranks of the ruling conservative party, unlike most of his peers who attended the country's elite "Grandes Ecoles" universities. and subsequently landed plum jobs.
Self-promotion
A consummate self-publicist, he portrays himself as coming from outside the ruling political caste and in touch with voters' real concerns.
Market force
Critics in France brand him a rampant free marketeer but, during a brief spell as finance minister in 2004, he intervened to save French firm Alstom from collapse, presided over the merger of Sanofi and Aventis to make the world's third-biggest drugs group and put pressure on hypermarkets to cut prices.
Just the job
Sarkozy wants tax breaks for those working overtime, a single job contract to replace permanent and fixed-term contracts, cuts in public service staff levels to fund debt reduction and pay rises for public servants.
Foreign view
He opposes Turkey's European Union entry and is critical of French hostility to Washington over Iraq. A photo taken with United States President George W. Bush, who is highly unpopular in France, was judged a gaffe.
- REUTERS, INDEPENDENT
