FRANCE: France's political class united yesterday in condemning far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen for his remarks that the Nazi occupation of France during the second World War had not been "particularly inhumane".
The government has called for a preliminary police inquiry to determine whether Mr Le Pen's comments broke the law. "He's disqualified himself as a politician" and should explain himself before a court, Justice Minister Dominique Perben said.
Mr Le Pen stood by his comments. "It's true, and it's scandalous enough that, 60 years after the war, one is not allowed to express oneself in a coherent and calm way on these subjects," he said.
During the Nazi German occupation of France from 1940 until 1944, about 76,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps. Only some 2,500 survived.
Mr Le Pen sparked the protests by telling the right-wing weekly Rivarol: "In France, at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhumane, although there were some blunders, inevitable in a country of 550,000 sq km."
Mr Le Pen alarmed Europe in 2002 by reaching the second round of France's presidential election on an anti-immigrant and anti-Europe platform. He is now campaigning against the EU's constitution, and said the political outrage his comments generated was meant to discredit this campaign.