FRANCE: Nicolas Sarkozy, looking to build support for his French presidential ambitions, spoke out against gay marriage yesterday, but insisted that homosexual couples should not suffer financial discrimination.
The interior minister's articulated approach to gay rights underlined his wish to defend his conservative credentials without slamming the door on minority groups or appearing extremist.
In an interview with Le Figaro magazine, timed to coincide with the start of a party congress in Marseille, Mr Sarkozy accused Socialist party frontrunner Ségolène Royal of being a political lightweight with no clear ideas of her own.
Mr Sarkozy hopes to use the three-day meeting of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) to improve his status as the best-placed conservative for 2007 presidential polls and broaden his appeal beyond the law-and-order brief that made his name. The UMP is due to pick its candidate in January.
He is expected to discuss youth and green issues in a speech on Sunday, and in Le Figaro broached for the first time the question of gay rights, saying homosexual couples should not be able to marry or adopt children. Ms Royal approves both measures.
"On the other hand, I am deeply hostile to any type of discrimination . . . We must therefore create a system which on the fiscal, patrimonial and inheritance level guarantees equality to heterosexual and homosexual couples," he said.
- (Reuters)