PARIS, July 28: France plans to ban the far-right group frequented by a man who fired a potshot at President Jacques Chirac on the Champs Elysee avenue in Paris two weeks ago, an interior ministry official said on Sunday.

The government will exploit a law dating to before World War Two to prohibit Unite Radicale, a movement whose main channel of public communication is an Internet web site, the official said.

Unite Radicale, born in 1998 at a time when the hard-right National Front political party headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen split in two, groups militants of the extreme right but it denies that it is a paramilitary organisation.

It also denies it had any involvement with the would-be assassination on July 14, when Maxime Brunerie, 25, pulled a .22 rifle and fired in Chirac’s direction while he was taking part in a Bastille Day parade commemorating the 1789 revolution.

Brunerie, who was quickly wrestled to the ground by parade watchers and police is still in a mental hospital and undergoing psychological tests before determining whether his condition allows him to stand trial on charges of attempted murder.—Reuters