Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin yesterday launched a new political party, setting his sights on challenging long-time rival Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidency in 2012.

Supporters cried "Villepin, president" as the new centre right Republique Solidaire was launched in Paris in front of 3,000 supporters.

The ex-prime minister, who is one of Sarkozy's fiercest critics, told the crowd "something new was rising again in France, something that would not cease to grow with the passing of the months," adding that France's social and economic system had run out of steam.

De Villepin, 56, a member of Sarkozy's UMP party, served alongside him under former president Jacques Chirac, but the pair fell out spectacularly over who should succeed him.

A patrician former career diplomat who speaks flawless English, he won global fame for leading the charge against the US invasion of Iraq at the UN in 2003.

Brigitte Girardin, president of De Villepin's 15,000 strong support club, said De Villepin stood for "defence of republican values, an institutional equilibrium, social justice and the independence of France in the world".

"We are launching this great association because there is an expectation in our country of an alternative to the current politics which has not given the expected results," she said.

De Villepin, who also served as foreign and interior minister under Chirac, last Friday took aim at Sarkozy in an interview published in Le Monde.

Sarkozy's government's dominant trait, he said, "was that it was developing policies with pollsters who every day look at the surveys and ask what publicity stunt they can score".