Le Pen forces rivals to sit on the fringe

THE FAR-RIGHT National Front symbolically and publicly divided into two parties yesterday, confirming a 10-day old schism which now seems irreparable.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party's founder president, and his internal rival, Bruno Megret, "met" for the first time since the NF imploded. They each took their seats in the regional assembly for Provence, the Alps and the Cote d'Azur in Marseilles. Previously, they had sat side by side. Yesterday they sat apart, proudly avoiding one another's gaze, and surrounded by their respective supporters.

At Mr Le Pen's insistence, Mr Megret and 10 of the 37 NF regional councillors were made to sit apart from the rest of the group. Also at Mr Le Pen's insistence, they sat to the far right of the assembly, even further to the right than the NF president and his loyalists.

The battle between the two wings of the NF - the Le Pen loyalists and purists and the Megret modernisers - has been fought, in part, with infantile pique of this kind. But it has also developed into a legal struggle for the party's money and the party's name.

As Mr Megret put it: "The historic Front is them. The real Front is us. The problem now is to decide which of us is the legal Front." His supporters say they have more than the 20 per cent of signatures of NF members they need to call an emergency conference to decide the party's future. Mr Le Pen refuses to countenance such a meeting. The Megretistes will go ahead anyway and hold their congress at Marignane, north of Marseilles, on 24 January. It will almost certainly declare Mr Le Pen deposed and elect Mr Megret as head of his "real" NF. First indications from around the country are that the party has been carved down the middle.

Although Mr Le Pen took the majority of NF regional councillors in the south, Mr Megret has the overwhelming majority in Lorraine and exactly half in the Paris region. He also has two of the four NF mayors (including his wife) and more than half the NF national council.