Security probe after Chirac scare

French security chiefs were today investigating how a deranged neo-Nazi came within yards of shooting President Jacques Chirac.

The gunman tried to assassinate the president during a Paris street parade in a chilling real-life replay of The Day of the Jackal.

The would-be killer was about 130 feet away when he took a loaded .22 rifle out of a guitar case and aimed it at M Chirac as he was passing in an open-top jeep at yesterday's annual Bastille Day celebrations.

But as he was about to pull the trigger, cries of alarm from the crowd alerted police who quickly wrestled the gunman to the ground. In the confusion, a single shot was fired into the air.

The man was named as neo-Nazi activist Maxime Brunerie, 25, from the Paris suburb of Courcouronnes. Police said he was a well-known extreme Right-wing supporter of defeated presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.

He reportedly has a history of psychiatric problems and was last night transferred to a mental health facility.

The incident happened at around 11am as M Chirac was passing the Arc de Triomphe on his way to inspect troops as part of the annual celebrations marking the 1789 revolution.

Witness Mohamed Chlali, 50, a Canadian tourist, said: "I was watching the parade. M Chirac was passing in his command car when I felt a movement in the crowd to my right.

"Two or three yards away, I saw a man in the process of aiming in the direction of the President.

"A neighbour hit the shooter's hand while I gripped part of the weapon and a piece of metal fell off. Another person pushed the gun upwards."

Frederick Forsyth, who wrote The Day of the Jackal in 1969, said: "He seems to fit in with a long line of nutters, in the same category as the young maniac who shot Yitzhak Rabin. He produced a rifle in the thick of a crowd, which is madness because he was highly visible.

"My man (the Jackal) was not a nutter, he was a highly-trained assassin who chose a tall building as his spot, which gives a far higher chance of success."

Government minister Patrick Devedijan said: "It was an assassination attempt. He fired a first shot ... then he was overcome and tried to turn the weapon against himself. He admitted he wanted to kill the president."-M Chirac's wife Bernadette also replied "yes, clearly" when asked if she thought the man was trying to kill her husband.

Nicolas Couteau of the Force Ouvriere police union said: "He fired in the direction of the car but the bullet went astray and nobody was injured.

"I don't think there was any plot because the shooter would have used a gun of a larger calibre. It looks like an act of a demented person."

Questions are now being asked about how the man managed to reach the Champs Elysees despite heavy security.

A police spokesman said: "An inquiry has been launched into how this man got so close to the president with a gun without being stopped by security."

In Forsyth's novel The Day of the Jackal an assassin shoots at French president Charles de Gaulle during a military parade in Paris. The bullet misses de Gaulle's head by a fraction of an inch and ricochets off the pavement.