After feud, Le Pen junior to stand in French vote
PARIS (Reuters) - Marion Marechal-Le Pen, a rising star in France's far-right National Front, announced on Tuesday she would stand in regional elections this year after her maverick grand-father Jean-Marie Le Pen promised not to disrupt her ticket. The 25-year-old lawmaker had initially hesitated after a feud exploded between the current party leader - her aunt Marine Le Pen - and its aging founder, who was suspended from the party this month for comments downplaying the Holocaust. "I've made a decision. I will be a candidate," Marechal-Le Pen told conservative weekly Valeurs Actuelles said of the vote in the south-east Provence Alpes Cotes d'Azur (Paca) region, a Jean-Marie Le Pen stronghold, in December regional elections. She added she had received "assurances" from her grandfather that he would not interfere in the campaign. Marechal-Le Pen is a leader of the socially conservative wing of the anti-immigrant party, being vocal in opposition to a law allowing same-sex marriage that was passed in 2013. She has in the past been reluctant to publicly criticize her outspoken grandfather but in the current row said he had gone too far. (Reporting by Ingrid Melander and Sophie Louet; editing by Mark John)
