French President Nicolas Sarkozy ruled out any deal with the far-right National Front of Marine Le Pen, backed by nearly a fifth of voters in a presidential election first round, to give them cabinet jobs or help them win seats in parliament. An opinion poll showed two-thirds of Sarkozy supporters want him to break with past policy and strike an alliance with the Front after Le Pen's 17.9 percent score on Sunday made her 6.4 million backers key to a May 6 presidential runoff. Both Sarkozy and Socialist Francois Hollande, who beat the conservative by 28.6 percent to 27.2 percent on the first round and leads opinion polls for the runoff, are striving to respond to the protest vote without angering traditional supporters. Sarkozy said on Wednesday that listening to Le Pen's backers did not mean he could envisage far-right ministers in a conservative-led government. “There will be no pact with the National Front,” he told France Info radio, saying there were too many issues on which the parties disagreed to imagine giving the party cabinet posts. “There will be no National Front ministers, but I refuse to demonize men and women who in voting for Marine Le Pen cast a crisis vote, a vote of anger, a vote of suffering and a vote of despair. I have to listen to their message...”
