Marine Le Pen, daughter of the far-right leader of France's National Front party, said today she would put herself forward as successor to her father in leadership elections in 2011.

Jean-Marie Le Pen has led the anti-immigrant party since the 1970s, and in recent years his daughter has emerged as a charismatic younger face of the National Front.

Asked in an interview on French radio if she would be a candidate to succeed her father, she replied: "Yes."

Her father shocked France in 2002 when he beat then Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin in the first round of the presidential election to reach the run-off against incumbent Jacques Chirac, a conservative.

Jean-Marie Le Pen has been convicted of offences including minimising the Holocaust and inciting racial hatred.

In another interview today, Marine Le Pen called large-scale immigration a "time bomb" and linked it to crime.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's promise to be tough on immigration is widely believed to have won him the support of many National Front voters in the 2007 presidential election.