French press review 31 March 2012

The arrest in France of 17 suspected members of Islamists networks makes the front pages of Saturday’s papers. There's debate on fiscal crisis and its imapct on the presidential campaign. And a Catholic paper asks if the US really wants a Mormon president.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has made the battle against extremism the keynote of his reelection campaign, in the wake of the trauma in France resulting from last week’s series of cold-blooded shootings in Toulouse and Montauban that left seven dead, including three Jewish children.

“Offensive against radical Islamists in France”, headlines Le Figaro. The paper gives a detailed account of the dawn raids carried out by agents from the domestic intelligence agency and elite police across several cities including Toulouse where gunman Mohamed Merah was shot dead and Paris region.

The big haul is also the cover story of today’s Le Parisien/Aujourd’hui en France. The newspaper underlines that those arrests include three women and the head of a suspected Salafist group called Forsane Alizza opposed to the ban in France of the burka and the niqab.

Police say they seized three Kalashnikovs, a Glock pistol and a grenade during a raid at his home in Nantes. A leading French expert interviewed by Le Figaro puts the number of Salafists residing in France at up to 10,000. The conservative newspaper also highlights Sarkozy’s determination to make law and order a key issue in the presidential campaign, buoyed by the lift in his approval rating thanks to his handling of the attacks.

Libération isn’t impressed by Sarkozy’s changing political fortunes.

The left-leaning paper splashed its cover page with a drawing of Sarkozy sitting on a timebomb. The caption: "Nicolas Sarkozy is refusing to talk as suspicions grow about possible connections between the Bettencourt affair and the suspected illegal funding of his 2007 presidential election campaign".

The paper claims that while silence is golden, it’s time up for the hide-and-seek game played for years, by former ruling party treasurer Eric Woerth and Bettencourt fortune manager Patrice de Maistre. Libé believes the edifice is about to collapse with de Maistre now under extended judicial detention appears ready to tell it all.

Le Monde takes up the tense debate about fiscal reform that has placed the centre-right majority and the Socialists on a collision course.

In an exclusive interview published by the respected newspaper, French Budget Minister Valerie Pécresse accuses François Hollande of planning to introduce a tax scheme similar to the model that pushed Greece into bankruptcy.

This weekend’s La Croix closes up on the other presidential campaign, underway in the United States. It is a special investigative report on the Mormons of America, the religious community to which Republican front-runner Mitt Romney belongs.

The Catholic daily wonders if America is ready to pick its next president from a faith driven by a culture of racial preference and segregation.