France will take steps to break up and ban all neo-Nazi groups on French soil after new figures showed that the number of violent attacks they committed more than doubled last year, the interior minister said yesterday.

Dominique de Villepin told French television that the move did not target Jean-Marie Le Pen´s far-right Front National, a legitimate political party, but the small, splintered ultra-right groups "whose common traits are incitement to hatred and the recourse to violence".

According to a French intelligence service report, up to 20 such groups are active, mainly in Alsace, the greater Paris region and southern France. Between them they have up to 3,500 members, and were responsible for 65 violent attacks in 2004, compared with 27 the previous year.

Announcing the measure to the national assembly late on Tuesday, Mr De Villepin said: "These groups are a disgrace to our national memory and our republican values. They are also a danger and a threat. Faced with this unacceptable situation, I will take all necessary steps."

A ministry official said yesterday that Mr De Villepin would present the cabinet with "all the necessary proofs and justifications" for breaking up the groups by the end of February. "Only those groups with values compatible with the republic will remain," he said.

The government will invoke a 1936 law that allows the president to dissolve "private militias and combat groups" by decree. The same law was used three years ago to dissolve Unité Radicale, one of whose members, Maxime Brunerie, pulled a rifle from a guitar case and fired a shot at Jacques Chirac during the 2002 Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Elysées.

According to the intelligence service report, supporters of France´s extreme right fall into various categories: skinheads, ultra- nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and hooligans. Their attacks are no longer aimed mostly at Jews but at a new "worst common enemy": Muslims and Arabs on French soil.

Mr De Villepin told parliament that he would demand "great vigilance" from the police to ensure groups did not re-form under new names. Local authorities would be ordered to ban public rallies by targeted groups, he said, and anyone renting out a meeting room would have to check the identity of the hirer and real purpose of the event.

The minister also said he would ask website hosts to stop groups using the internet to spread neo-Nazi messages, and would take legal action against those failing to do so.

The anti-racism group SOS Racisme praised the minister´s decision. But police and some opposition MPs said it would be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce. "Proving that these are genuine groups rather than informal gatherings of friends will not be easy," one intelligence officer said. "And once you´ve managed it, then what? Unité Radicale was banned and has since just re-formed as Bloc Identitaire. They will all rename themselves."

Armand Jung, a Socialist MP from Alsace, where half a dozen mass meetings of 300-800 French and German neo-Nazis have taken place over the past two years using the pretext of a party, a concert, a football match and even, on one occasion, a wedding, said the move was "wishful thinking".

"In Alsace we have a serious problem, but there are no organised groups whatsoever, no names and addresses."

Mr Le Pen, the Front National leader, caused outrage this month by saying that the Nazi occupation during the second world war had not been "particularly inhumane".

Mr De Villepin said yesterday that it would be up to the courts to judge that comment, but that the far-right party was at present "still in the realm of politics" and "of a different nature to the neo-Nazi movement". (Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 02/03/05)