Poll: Sarkozy voters want pact with French far-right - Jerusalem Post

PARIS - A majority of supporters of French President Nicolas Sarkozy want his UMP party to strike an alliance with the far-right National Front of Marine Le Pen ahead of parliamentary elections in June, an opinion poll published on Tuesday showed.

Sarkozy and other leaders of the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) have so far ruled out any such deal.

"There has never been and there will never be an agreement with the extreme right," UMP Finance Minister Francois Baroin said on television in a first reaction to the survey.

The poll was a further sign of the inroads being made by Le Pen, who scored a record 17.9 percent of the vote in the first round of a presidential election on Sunday.