Fillon's party apologises for anti-Semitic attack on French rival Macron

Paris: Francois Fillon`s party has apologised for tweeting a caricature of Emmanuel Macron, his main rival in the race to be France`s next president, that Fillon himself admitted was anti-Semitic, adding to a row of controversies around his campaign.

Another development on Sunday was a report in the French weekly newspaper Journal du Dimanche saying an anonymous person had given Fillon two suits costing 13,000 euros at a chic Paris boutique.

"A friend gave me suits as a present in February. So what?" Fillon said in an interview with French news daily Les Echos.

France sets a limit of 4,600 euros that any individual can donate to all candidates during an election campaign. 

The controversy came the same weekend that Fillon`s conservative The Republicans tweeted an image of the independent centrist Macron with a hooked nose, wearing a top hat and carrying a red sickle with which he was cutting a cigar. 

The image resembled anti-Semitic propaganda from World War Two when France`s Vichy government collaborated with the Nazis and their deportation and extermination of Jews. Macron is not Jewish but the cartoon appeared to refer to his past as a Rothschild investment banker.

A day after the tweet was posted - and subsequently deleted - Fillon called the image "unacceptable" and said he understood the outrage it had caused "because it evoked the images of a dark period of our history and exploited an ideology that I have always fought against.

"Politics is tough but it must remain dignified. I will not tolerate my party using caricatures that use the themes of anti-Semitic propaganda," Fillon tweeted, saying he had demanded his party chief apologise and sanction the people responsible.

A spokeswoman for Macron declined to comment. He was due to appear on television at 8 p.m. (1900 GMT).

Fillon, once considered the favourite to win the presidency, has been badly damaged by a financial scandal and now lies in third place behind Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the April 23 first round. Only the top two candidates will go through to a run-off on May 7.