Hardline image haunts campaign of France's Sarkozy

PARIS (Reuters) - Conservative frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy was forced onto the defensive on Wednesday just four days before France's presidential election, as media and his rivals portrayed him as a dangerous right-winger.

"The worrying Mr Sarkozy" headlined the leftwing daily Liberation over a story that said aides to the former interior minister were also concerned by his inability to soften his hardline image and broaden his appeal to moderate voters.

Sarkozy's closest rivals, Socialist Segolene Royal and third-placed centrist Francois Bayrou, are concentrating their fire on his character, seeking to make Sunday's first round vote a referendum on his personality as much as his policies.

Portraying him as an agitated, dangerous right-winger, they say his inability to visit France's multi-ethnic suburbs without a small army of riot police shows he is incapable of being the unifying force a president is supposed to be.

A week of sharp exchanges with far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who saw in Sarkozy's talk on immigration, crime and national identity a bid to steal his voters, also harmed his efforts to rebrand himself as a milder, more open character.

"I'm attacked morning, noon and night and with such violence," Sarkozy told France Inter radio.

"I'm trying to tell the French people I will unite them, and to do that I have to love them, understand them, listen to them. That's what I'll do in the second round, if I make it," said Sarkozy, who is the frontrunner in opinion polls.

Two new polls showed Sarkozy ahead of Royal on Wednesday, with one survey showing the Socialist narrowing the gap, and another showing them at the same distance as in a previous survey. A CSA poll this week made the race a tie.

Sarkozy won some welcome support from former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who said in an interview in Thursday's Le Parisien daily he would be backing him rather than Bayrou, leader of the UDF party he founded.

"SUPERMARKET PROLETARIAT"

Sarkozy has dismissed the attacks on him as the favorite's burden, noting conservatives Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac and Socialist Francois Mitterrand had all been portrayed as extremists but won -- the latter pair at the third attempt.

Sarkozy consciously softened his tone earlier this year, adopting Royal's buzz words of respect, confidence and debate in an attempt to appeal to moderate voters he needs to be elected.

Posters of Sarkozy have been systematically defaced across France, while the image of most of the other 11 candidates contesting the April 22 first round ballot are mostly unscathed.

With Bayrou challenging strongly for a place in the run-off, Royal has gone left in recent weeks in a bid to win back waverers and ensure no repeat of 2002, when the Socialist candidate was knocked out in the first round.

On a visit to a Paris supermarket she contrasted "golden parachute" payouts for rich bosses with workers' low wages and praised female workers as "today's proletariat".

However, Royal has also come under attack for policy gaffes and internal disputes in past weeks. On Wednesday, she defended herself for canceling several media interviews on short notice.

"I'm a free woman," she told TF1 television. "As to what concerns my character, I think there is a very important quality that Francois Mitterrand had -- it's cool-headedness."