UMP presses Cope to quit

The leader of France's main opposition Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), Jean-Francois Cope (pictured, center), looked set to quit on Tuesday. He had previously shunned calls for his ouster.

After a tumultuous crisis meeting in Paris, UMP members tweeted and told French television that Cope had agreed to resign from June 15.

His departure would accelerate the race within the UMP to find a candidate for France's 2017 presidential election. Waiting in the wings are three former premiers Francois Fillon, Alain Juppe and Jean-Pierre Raffarin, as well as ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Heavyweights, including Fillon and Sarkozy, had demanded Cope's resignation over multimillion-euro contracts made with a public relations firm owned by friends of Cope, allegedly to skirt campaign finance laws.

Sarkozy's former deputy campaign manager Jerome Lavrilleux claimed on television on Monday night that bills for Sarkozy's failed 2012 re-election bid were instead passed off as invoices for party conferences to cover campaign cost over-runs.

Cope said that he was unaware of any wrongdoing

Fillon: UMP's 'honor' damaged

Fillon, who was Sarkozy's former prime minister, had previously claimed that the scandal surrounding Cope had damaged the UMP's "credibility and honor" during the European Parliament elections.

On Sunday, the UMP ended up with 20.8 percent and a distant second behind France's far-right National Front (FN) led by Marine Le Pen, at just under 25 percent.

That left the UMP with 20 seats in the new European Parliament, down from its previous tally of 29, compared with the FN's 24.

Previously, surveys had suggested that the UMP was running neck-and-neck with the FN.

The ruling Socialists came third with just 13 seats in the European Parliament.

ipj/msh (AFP, Reuters, AP)