France's National Front convenes to decide Le Pen's fate

NAVARRE , France, May 4 (UPI) -- Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France's far-right National Front party, will meet with leaders Monday to learn his position within the party.

A meeting of the disciplinary committee has been called to determine if Le Pen, 86, will lose his position as honorary president. A number of inflammatory remarks about the Holocaust and World War II, and an ongoing feud with his daughter and party leader, Marine, 47, led to Monday's hearing.

Le Pen, who founded the party in 1972, has recently repeated his claim that World War II gas chambers were "a detail of history," and that French wartime collaborators with the Nazis have been misjudged by history. The party, although still anti-immigrant and right-wing, is attempting to steer away from its racist and anti-Semitic past.

There has been pressure within the party to expel the elder Le Pen and remove his title of honorary president. He was noticeably absent from a National Front May Day rally on May 1 in Paris, but nonetheless barged onto the podium, to an ovation from the crowd, in an attempt to upstage his daughter.

"I think that was a malicious act, I think it was an act of contempt towards me. I get the feeling that he can't stand that the National Front continues to exist when he no longer heads it up," Marine Le Pen said Sunday.

The public feud between father and daughter has pushed Marine Le Pen's plan to run for the French presidency in 2017 to the background.