Cazeneuve named French PM as Valls aims for president

PARIS: French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was named the country´s new prime minister on Tuesday after Manuel Valls resigned to seek the Socialist nomination in next year´s presidential election.

Cazeneuve, who has overseen the security forces´ reaction to a string of jihadist attacks that have killed more than 230 people in France over the past two years, will head the Socialist government until the election in May.

The widely-respected lawyer was named to the post after President Francois Hollande accepted Valls´ resignation.

The government will work "up to the end, to its last day, to prepare the future," Hollande told reporters on Tuesday during a trip to an industry fair near Paris.

Cazeneuve, 53, has served in various government roles, including budget and Europe minister before becoming interior minister in April 2014.

"He has a good knowledge of the security issues and the fight against terrorism, which are the government´s priorities," an aide to Hollande told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Cazeneuve will be replaced in the interior ministry by Bruno Le Roux, currently the leader of the Socialists in the lower house of parliament.

The mini-reshuffle comes after Valls, who was Hollande´s right-hand man for the past two-and-a-half years, quit to focus on the presidential race.

Valls, a divisive figure, threw his hat in the ring on Monday, after Hollande said last week he would bow out after a single troubled term.

Appealing to the left to unite behind him, Valls vowed to take the fight to election frontrunner, conservative Republicans candidate Francois Fillon, as well as far-right National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen.

"My candidacy is one of reconciliation," Valls, whom polls currently place fifth in the election, said in a speech in his political base in the gritty Paris suburb of Evry.

The far-right, which was beaten in Austria´s presidential election at the weekend, was "at the gates of power" in France with a programme that would ruin the poor, he warned.

Faced with Donald Trump in the White House and Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, France needed someone with "strong experience", he said.

Spanish-born Valls will go up against seven other candidates in the two-round primary on January 22 and 29, including Arnaud Montebourg, another former economy minister from a leftist Socialist faction.

Many on the left see Valls as a rightwinger after he used decrees to force through labour reforms and called for dual-national terror convicts to be stripped of their French nationality.

His stern line on secularism and Islam has also turned off many lifelong Socialists after he declared the Islamic burkini swimsuit was "not compatible" with French values last summer.