(Adds Gaddafi aide reaction, Fillon quote, Sarkozy quote)
* Sarkozy says Gaddafi allegations are fabricated
* Dismisses charge of orchestrating Strauss-Kahn downfall
* Hollande 10 points ahead week before May 6 runoff
By Daniel Flynn and Sophie Louet
PARIS, April 29 (Reuters) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy
dismissed as a “disgrace” a report that deposed Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi had sought to help him win power, a week before
a presidential runoff in which he is trailing his Socialist
challenger Francois Hollande.
Struggling to reduce Hollande’s 10 point lead in opinion
polls for the May 6 runoff, Sarkozy also slammed accusations
from former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Socialists’
presidential favourite before a May 2011 sex scandal, that his
downfall was orchestrated by his political foes.
The conservative leader said Strauss-Kahn’s comments were
“vulgar” and that the left was using the Mediapart report to
distract attention from his reappearance on the political scene.
The former finance minister “should have the decency to keep
quiet”, Sarkozy said, betraying his frustration at a campaign
that has become increasingly bitter.
Since losing to Hollande in the April 22 first round,
Sarkozy has tried to turn voters’ attention to his rival’s lack
of government experience and economic policies he says will be a
disaster for an economy struggling to reduce debt.
Hollande has ridden a wave of discontent with austerity
measures as well as Sarkozy’s abrasive style.
Both have been courting the almost one in five voters who
helped far-right candidate Marine Le Pen into third place.
Sarkozy needs about 80 percent of Le Pen voters behind him to
avoid defeat, but surveys conducted during or after the first
round found only 44-60 percent planned to back Sarkozy.
Strauss-Kahn said in comments published on Friday that
opponents had torpedoed his presidential bid by making sure his
now infamous sexual encounter with a hotel maid was made public.
“You see that this is an attempt to create a distraction
after the return to public life of Strauss-Kahn,” Sarkozy told
Le Parisien daily. “They don’t want anyone to remember they
wanted to make him the next president of the French republic.”
Clearly embarrassed by the Strauss-Kahn article, the
Socialists sought to distance themselves from it.
Sarkozy later said he was shocked by the investigative
website Mediapart, which said it had uncovered a document from
Libya’s former secret services indicating Gaddafi’s government
had decided to finance Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.
“Who led the coalition to topple Gaddafi? It was France!,”
Sarkozy told Canal+ television. “Do you think that if Gaddafi
had anything on me I would have tried to oust him?” he added.
“It’s a disgrace. It’s a fabrication,” Sarkozy said,
accusing the website of working in the service of the left.
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Other stories on French election
Factbox on the election procedure
Graphic on French polls http://r.reuters.com/was36s
French election online http://link.reuters.com/pyr27s
Interactive runoff calculator http://r.reuters.com/nym77s
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STINK BOMBS
With two-thirds of French telling pollsters they have a
negative view of him, Sarkozy is the most unpopular incumbent to
seek a second term and the only one to lose a first-round vote
after Hollande beat him by just over one percentage point.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the combination of the
Mediapart report and Strauss-Kahn’s claim of a plot against him
suggested the Socialists were uncertain of victory next weekend.
“As if by chance, it’s the moment when all the stink bombs
are being thrown about in a scandalous fashion,” he added.
Hollande told Canal+ Strauss-Kahn was not part of his
presidential campaign, and Segolene Royal, Hollande’s former
partner and the Socialists’ losing candidate in the 2007
election, said Strauss-Kahn was “unwanted”.
Mediapart, staffed by a number of veteran French newspaper
and news agency journalists, printed a copy of a 2006 document
in Arabic, apparently signed by Gaddafi’s former intelligence
chief Moussa Koussa, which stated his government would pay 50
million euros for Sarkozy’s campaign.
Gaddafi’s former chief of staff Bashir Saleh denied taking
part in the meeting to agree on the campaign funding and cast
doubt on the authenticity of the document cited by Mediapart,
saying he had never received a copy of it.
“These politically intentioned allegations are completely
unfounded,” he said in a statement sent by his lawyers.
Fillon said the document was “false, or at least impossible
to verify” and said it was ridiculous to talk of 50 million
euros to finance a campaign that cost 20 million and for which
accounts were publicly available.
The Mediapart website, which gained prominence in 2010 when
it broke news of a major political funding scandal around
Sarkozy’s UMP party and L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt,
called for an official investigation.
Sarkozy has repeatedly fended off accusations he was too
close to Gaddafi, who he invited to Paris in 2007, letting him
pitch his Bedouin-style tent next to the presidential palace,
following his intervention to get five Bulgarian nurses freed
from a Libyan jail.
Earlier this month Sarkozy denied an accusation that he once
discussed selling Gaddafi a nuclear reactor but then
backpedalled and admitted that a reactor could have been needed
to power a seawater desalination plant that France discussed
selling Libya under a nuclear energy cooperation deal.
(Additional reporting by Sophie Louet; Editing by Catherine
Bremer and Philippa Fletcher)
