French Campaign Enters Final Week

PARIS -- A week before the French begin choosing their next president, the dozen candidates moved into the final campaign stretch like a band of ragtag political warriors, insulting, pleading and dickering for votes.

In the first round of an election that no one dares call in advance, Socialist presidential hopeful Segolene Royal has made an unflinching appeal to women to support her in Sunday's vote, while front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy is reaching out to farmers, to those who voted no to a European constitution and to all who love France.

Unlike previous elections, no single theme has emerged. Jobs, immigration and the French identity have all taken turns in the spotlight.

The only constant has been the front-runner status of conservative candidate Sarkozy whom far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen dreams of facing in the May 6 final round.

Candidates have five days left to campaign, until Friday night, and they are casting their nets wide.

At a Paris rally on Sunday, Le Pen, in fourth place in polls, predicted a "big surprise" in the first-round vote, perhaps large enough to match his stunning performance in 2002 elections. The anti-immigration candidate placed second then and faced off incumbent President Jacques Chirac in the final round.

"There will again ... be a big surprise, a crying and gnashing of teeth," the 78-year-old Le Pen told a crowd of 5,000. "I count on the general mobilization of all French patriots."

An earthy orator who typically lambasts opponents, Le Pen took aim at Sarkozy. "You haven't understood the formidable anger of the French, plundered, ruined, desperate, at the political scum of which you are one of the leaders," he said.

Sarkozy's campaign has been haunted by the word "scum," which he used in 2005 as interior minister to describe delinquents, days before riots broke out in housing projects. The term has handicapped his ability to campaign in poor neighborhoods where voter registration has dramatically increased.

Le Pen, whose hallmark slogan is "French first," denounced the poaching on his political territory that Sarkozy has blatantly done with his emphasis on immigration and the French identity. Royal also took up the theme, playing the French national anthem at rallies and suggesting all citizens get themselves a French flag.

"My rivals put at the center of their campaigns themes ... for which I have been defamed, insulted and demonized for 30 years," Le Pen said.

Sarkozy, covering all bases, nodded to farmers, those who hobbled construction of the European Union by voting down a constitution in a referendum last May and patriots during a political outing in southern Aix-en-Provence.