By Brian Love
PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives are in disarray over immigration, Islam and law-and-order after far-right leader Marine Le Pen sailed past him for the first time in an opinion poll.
His UMP party is playing to public fears over migration and Islam ahead of next year's presidential election, but centrist supporters this week forced his government to back down on a flagship measure intended to show toughness on immigrant crime.
Le Pen, 42, who succeeded her father Jean-Marie as leader of the National Front in January, has articulated fears of a mass influx of Arab refugees from the uprisings in North Africa and of a threat to France's secular order from Islam.
Turmoil in Sarkozy's camp was highlighted on Wednesday when Prime Minister Francois Fillon and UMP leader Jean-Francois Cope disowned comments by a party lawmaker that France should put North African migrants "back in the boats" and send them home.
Chantal Brunel, a former UMP spokeswoman, said she was sorry for any offence but stuck to her comment, echoing Le Pen, that: "We must reassure the French people about any migrant flow that may come from the other side of the Mediterranean. In sum, let's put them back in the boats."
Other party members defended her, arguing that voter concerns over immigration and security should not be left to a National Front leader whose positions were no longer taboo.
Sarkozy, whose popularity is at a record low 13 months before the first round of the 2012 presidential election, looks determined to try to win back Le Pen's voters by addressing the same themes as her.
But some politicians in his own camp, especially among centrists, say his strategy is counter-productive and will only legitimise Le Pen and her agenda.
CENTRIST REVOLT
Centrist lawmakers rebelled on Tuesday against a bill to strip recent immigrants who attack police officers of their French citizenship, forcing Sarkozy to drop a measure he promised last year in what was seen as a bid for Le Pen voters.
The president announced the plan with a blaze of publicity last July after an urban shootout in Grenoble.
The policy zigzag follows publication of an opinion poll by Harris Interactive that put Le Pen ahead of Sarkozy and any Socialist contender on the first presidential ballot in April 2012.
The poll, which drew widespread criticism from the political establishment over the methodology, stunned UMP supporters by suggesting Sarkozy might be knocked out before the May run-off.
"I know full well that the extreme right has been setting the media agenda and the political agenda, and I say now this must stop," Fillon told parliament.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, a former paratrooper convicted for anti-Semitic comments, shocked France and the world when he knocked out the Socialist candidate to reach the second round of the 2002 presidential election. He lost to conservative incumbent Jacques Chirac.
Many mainstream politicians and analysts say his daughter, a lawyer, has given the party a fresh face and more skilful voice in articulating the anger of many ordinary people against the political and economic elites.
"Nothing she (Le Pen) says is fascist," Christian Vanneste, a UMP member of parliament said on news channel i>tele.
Le Pen went on TV herself on Wednesday to shun widespread accusations that her party's political agenda is race-based and anti-immigrant, saying on i>tele: "The National Front is neither anti-Semitic nor racist nor xenophobic.
"The French people want us to deal with the things that they are truly worried about -- social breakdown, unemployment, immigration and exploding violence. Meanwhile the UMP and PS (socialist party) are obsessed with one thing -- halting the National Front," she said.
In a further sign of mounting unease, Sarkozy has invited centre-right arch-rival Dominique de Villepin to the Elysee Palace twice in three weeks, fuelling media speculation he hopes to convince Villepin not to run against him in 2012.
A presidential bid by the former Gaullist prime minister could cost Sarkozy mainstream right-wing votes. The Harris Interactive poll credited Villepin with 7 percent support.
(Editing by Paul Taylor and Janet Lawrence)
