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Le Pen softens line on immigrants

Marine Le Pen, president of the National Front, via Wikimedia Commons.
Marine Le Pen, president of the National Front, via Wikimedia Commons.

PARIS, July 22 (UPI) -- Marine Le Pen, leader of France's far-right Front National Party, says the party is prepared to soften its hard line against immigrants.

Le Pen told The Guardian it is the "responsibility of France to extend a hand to the Walloons," a French-speaking people who live in Belgium, principally in Wallonia.

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Le Pen issued a statement Tuesday on Belgium's national day, saying if Belgium can't remain united, Paris should "extend a hand" to Belgium's Francophones, French-speaking residents.

Belgium has gone without an official government since the Dutch-speaking north, where the Flamands live, and the French-speaking south, home to the Walloons, failed to agree on how the country should be run since an election more than a year ago.

"The political situation that Belgium is going through is getting worse, appears to have no solution and has left both Walloons and Flamands in a terrible uncertainty," Le Pen said.

"If Belgium is going to split, if Flanders pronounces its independence, which seems more and more credible a possibility, the French republic would do well to welcome Wallonia to its heart."

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