French far-right leader Marine Le Pen says she will back closer ties between NATO and Russia and pull Paris out of the alliance's military command if she wins the presidential race against incumbent Emmanuel Macron.
Foreign policy is set to play an important role in the 24 April run-off after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and accusations from Macron that Le Pen is too close to President Vladimir Putin.
Le Pen – who has no prior experience of government or international affairs – held a news conference on foreign policy on Wednesday designed to present herself as a credible figure on the global stage and take the spotlight off her previously close relationship to Putin.
"As soon as the Russian-Ukrainian war is over and has been settled by a peace treaty, I will call for the implementation of a strategic rapprochement between NATO and Russia," she said.
"We must ask about the role of the alliance after the end of the Warsaw Pact," the Moscow-led military alliance that grouped Soviet bloc nations, she told journalists.
'Defending French interests'
Macron has claimed Le Pen is "complacent" and "financially dependent" on the Kremlin after her party – called the National Front at the time – borrowed €9 million from a Russian-Czech bank in 2014 to finance local election campaigns.
At the conference she said any talk of betraying French interests or being indebted to Putin was "inaccurate and particularly unjust".
During her speech, a protestor holding up a heart-shaped picture of Le Pen and Putin shaking hands in 2017 was roughly dragged her out of the room by Le Pen's security detail.
Back in 2017, Le Pen said she shared the same values as Putin, but has since changed tack, condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and supporting sanctions other than on oil and gas imports – which she said would heavily impact the cost of living in France.
"I only ever defended the interests of France," she said in the press conference, underlining that her approach had been similar to Macron's since he had also sought to personal relationship with Putin, inviting him to the Versailles Palace.
Better ties with Russia, she said, would also prevent Moscow from becoming too close to China.
"This is in the interest of France and Europe but also I think the United States ... which has no interest in seeing a close Sino-Russian relationship emerging," Le Pen said.
NATO, Germany
Le Pen also reaffirmed her intention of repeating France's 1966 move of leaving NATO's integrated military command, while still adhering to its key article 5 on mutual protection.
France rejoined NATO's military structure in 2009.
"I would place our troops neither under an integrated NATO command nor under a future European command," she said, adding that she would refuse any "subjection to an American protectorate".
Le Pen said she wanted to keep a close relationship with Germany, but warned there were strategic differences between the two, which would mean ending a series of Franco-German joint military programmes.
"Germany is the absolute opposite of France's strategic identity," said Le Pen, speaking of "irreconcilable strategic differences" between Paris and Berlin.
"I would continue ... reconciliation without following the Macron-Merkel model of French blindness towards Berlin," she said, referring to the former German chancellor with whom Macron shared a close relationship.
No UK-style 'Frexit'
Le Pen has modified her policy on Europe since 2017, when she campaigned to leave the EU and the eurozone.
On Wednesday, she said she didn't want "Frexit" along the lines of Britain's exit from the EU, but a looser version of the European Union.
"Nobody is against Europe," she said. "I would not stop paying France's contribution to the EU, I want to diminish it."
However, Le Pen argued that French predictions that Brexit would prove "a cataclysm for the English" had been proven wrong.
"The British got rid of the Brussels bureaucracy, which they could never bear, to move to an ambitious project of global Britain," she said.
But she added: "This is not our project. We want to reform the EU from the inside."
(with wires)
