Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Marine Le Pen might defeat President Nicolas Sarkozy if a French election were held now, a poll showed. Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a Socialist Party member, would win 33 percent in the first round, according to the Ipsos-LogicaBusiness Consulting poll for Le Monde and Europe 1 radio. Le Pen, leader of the National Front party,... 

On the rise: National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen saw his party win almost 12 per cent of the vote in French regional elections Nicolas Sarkozy has received a drubbing in French regional elections which saw the re-emergence of the far-Right National Front. The president’s ruling UMP party polled 26 per cent in the first round of voting and the Socialists almost 30 per cent. But Jean Marie... 

For decades, the French considered it taboo to question whether immigration and foreign influences were diluting France’s social and cultural character. Indeed, the topic was considered so toxic that no one in France besides extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen would even take it up in public. But times have changed. Twenty years after Le Pen’s National Front Party (FN) became a political... 

France inaugurated its first military base in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, underlining an ambition to help meet the strategic challenge from Iran and capture a share of the region’s rich arms market for the French defense industry. President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a one-day visit to the United Arab Emirates’ capital, formally opened a 900-foot quay allocated to the French navy in Abu Dhabi’s...